Adding SCSI hard drive...

[Dogdaysdude]

Hello. I think I'd like to add a second hard drive, but I really want the speed of SCSI. I know there are lots of varieties. So what controller card/hard drive would be the correct type, considering I need speed for working with large databases?
Thanks.

[saphalline]

The speed of SCSI? On a PC? Sorry to break it to you, but in order to take full advantage of say, U320 SCSI, you'd need at least a dual-processor workstation mobo with at least a 66MHz 64-bit PCI-X slot. Some of the lower-end SCSI controller cards are coming out for PCIe x4 slots, but SCSI in general is really designed for the workstation/server arena, not PC's.

If you want the speed of SCSI without the price and complication, I'd suggest a WD Raptor hard drive. With a 10,000rpm motor, the Raptor series hard drives exceed the speed of a 7200rpm U320 SCSI hard drive any day - and the price is much cheaper.

If you want to actually work with SCSI, I'd suggest a dual-core system with a PCIe x4 slot and a basic $150 U320 SCSI card (plus the cost of two U320 SCSI hard drives). SCSI is usually a bit too expensive for home computers.

[Pentium100]

I am using Maxtor Atlas 15K_II 36GB 15000RPM SCSI320 hard drive. The controller is Adaptec 39160 (U160, PCI-X), installed in an 32bit 33MHz PCI slot. I get ~85-65MB/s of linear reading from that drive. Currently I am using that drive for page file and some "fast" tasks (that depend more on the HDD speed than the CPU). Wanted to make it a system drive, but did not manage to make computer to boot from that drive.

I got the controller for ~$50 and the hard drive for ~$130 from eBay (I do not remember the exact prices).

SCSI is good, because it supports many drives on one cable and is backward compatible.