SCSI fun and questions.

[Wizard]

I troll through ebay often and I see reasonable 10K and 15K SCSI drives like 18GB to 57GB range.

Some drives needs a cage with backplane (80pin), also I don't mind using 68pin (used it once and that was cool but let down was PCI limited the bandwidth). Some use fibre-channel interface, I did not see any fibre-channel controller on ebay?

Be aware that I might not want to buy adaptec controller card. If it is PCI-X that is fine since I can find cheap socket 370 or xeon motherboard.

Cheers, Wizard

[Uranium-235]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

don't nessaccarly need a backplane

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trk...All-Categories

heres your controller

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=fib...nel+controller

[Wizard]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

Is there better documentation for fibre channel particularly for storage?

I'm not sure this how is this done at hard drive end. Controller card easily understood.

Thanks and cheers, Wizard

[Uranium-235]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

yeah, wikipedia and google

fiber channel is like connecting hard drives directly to a network, or directly to a controller, depending on how you configure it

[NxB]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

FC has about 1/4 of the 80pin scsi connector on the drive. The fiber cables connect to the jbod/backplane and the drives connect to that. IMO the controllers are too expensive for the performance.

[bigbeark]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

Fibre channel is always implemented as an array of drives in a separate case.
You can get "T-cards" to hook up a single drive, but once you add up the cost of the controller card, the FC optical or copper cables and the T-card, you will be north of $100, not counting the FC drive itself.

Lots of FC adapters and drives available cheaply on Ebay.

Check this site http://www.cs-electronics.com/fibre-...l-adapters.htm

or for more personalized service try this guy:

http://store.ckcomputersystems.com/i...dex&cPath=1_67

I never pursued fibre-channel, I already had lots of SCSI on hand.

I have lots of SCSI controllers, adapters, cables and drives. It is my default setup for assembling machines. I use single SCSI drives because they are way faster than IDE.

The only thing I would advise is ALWAYS use a terminator on your SCSI cable. Lots of times I have been able to get away without one, but whenever the system has trouble detecting the drive adding the terminator fixes the problem. Also, avoid the white-label refurbs. I get my drives from a local recycler. I once bought 5 Hitachi 36GB drives for $20. They all work well.
I use HD coolers on all my drives, SCSI drives run pretty hot - especailly Seagate. Quantums are cool-running but noisy. I prefer Fujitsu.

[Wizard]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

Thank you all very much about FC SCSI stuff. I'll just give it a pass and look at true SCSI stuff.

For some reason, I find Adaptec line kinda of slow brain, what is good makers of SCSI cards these days?

Cheers, Wizard

[Uranium-235]

Re: SCSI fun and questions.

berk what about terminating a chain with a scsi drive, i've seen drives with terminator options. I only use scsi on workstations and servers, regular joe desktops always ide or sata

adaptec, lsi, areca are the big ones, but now a days SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is on its way to replacing Parallel scsi altogether.

before you wonder or ask, SAS controllers are compatible with SATA (physically an logically) drives, but not the other way around. I actually have just ONE sas adapter (Dell PERC-6). but I have numerous scsi adapters, most of them crap a few perc's with a memory stick and one with a backup battery

when it comes to servers, I usually try to use linux raid instead of a scsi raid, linux manages it better then the older cards I have