Ultra 160 SCSI

[Cossist]

I am about to configure a system for my future Digi001. I've gone through the DUC quite a bit (including the PT Performanc topic which was enjoyable), but I haven't read much on the performance of Ultra 160 SCSI drives. I've seen a few SCSI-2 with some nice Davec test stats. I was just wondering if the extra 200 clams for a 160 controller and twice the price for the drive are worth it.

Thanks,
Cossist

[da BaSsTaRd!]

ata/66 does it for me. most people that did the performance test and got 24+ tracks were using ide, so i guess the answer is no......

just get a fast ide drive and save sum $$

[JPS]

I would agree. In fact, I have seen posts where SCSI users are advised to "turn down" the throughput on the SCSI to 10-20 Mb/s, because too much speed may also cause some sort of problems and that 24 tracks only requires 3 Mb/s throughput. This would indicate that IDE drives are just fine.

However, I do have one technical question about this "recommended" procedure on SCSI. If you slow down the transfer speed on the drive, does that not in effect increase the utilization of the PCI bus and give you less ability to do other work or process plugins? I say this because Digi and hard drives are busmastering devices. If data transfers are faster (like perhaps a fast SCSI or even raid device), then they would require the bus usage for a shorter period of time for any given data task, and there should be more time for the Digi to perform other tasks. And this should equal better performance results. I may be missing somehing here, so if anybody has an explanation, it would be helpful.

[McGriffy]

I have an all SCSI system with two SCSI 160 drives. As you would hope, I have no trouble with drive speed. I love SCSI having writtin firmware for a SCSI card years ago, but even I must admit that the only valid excuse for it on an 001 system is to get more than four peripherals on your system. It appears that even a single decent ATA drive is more than enough for 24 tracks.

I also have wondered at the advice some have given to down speed their SCSI bus. I would think that this has little or no effect on the PCI bus since everything is buffered at least a bit on the SCSI card. I haven't tried this. I give them benefit of the doubt and assume they have seen real reductions in the PCI meter in PT, but since I have never heard a good explanation of what that meter means this doesn't help much.

DMcG