I don't care about a warranty. That's great in a desktop, but in a server, a warranty means nothing. If the server is down, the company isn't making money. This varies depending on the company, but if they want *ME* to build them a server, then it's either going to be expendable (in which case I'd use a desktop), or it'll be a server. Servers do not use IDE drives. Heck, even Workstations move to SCSI.
And IDE is NOT as fast as SCSI. It probably never will be. Sure, cache can make bursts on IDE work fast, and well. But you load up an IDE drive, and it just can't put out like SCSI can. That's especially true when there are two devices on a chain. (Granted you pointed that out), but let's say I want an average server with half a dozen disks, in a RAID 5 Array (I'm no fan of RAID 5 either but it's sort of a neccessary evil) plus a hot standby. With SCSI, I plug it in, and go. In order to do this with IDE, I need a seperate controller for each drive. If I add even just 6 or 8 drives, I have no PCI slots left in the server. (Once NICS, and a Remote Administration card is added.) Then how do I expand it? I know it officially exists, but do you REALLY trust hot-swap IDE? I've never tried it on IDE but I hardly trust it with SCSI. IDE needs a seperate chain for a few reasons. IDE can't read and write at the same time, even to different devices if they are on the same chain. SCSI can. If you can accept the higher failure rate, and you don't expect much growth, the IDE can be OK. But for my money, your best solution would be duplexed SCSI drives. And in my experience, I'd prefer Software duplexing, not hardware. It's a slight hit on the processor, that's true, but if it breaks, it's easier to fix, especially as things get older, and hardware (proprietary RAID cards) become unavailable. It's also DAMN expensive. But it's more convienient than RAID 5, and much faster too. Especially during disk reads. Cheap, Good, Fast. Pick any two. Kev. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Lane" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 2:21 PM Subject: Re: (clug-talk) How do you fsck the root partition? > At 12:51 PM 9/27/02, you wrote: > >hdparm allows you to pass parameters to the hard drive... :) > > > >Things that (for example) turn on or off: > > DMA > > Multi sector IO > > Standby Timeouts > > PIO mode > > DMA mode > > Benchmarking > > etc... > > > >Some things work great. Some depend on the drive/controller you have, and > >some seem like there're just there to teach people to RTFM. > > > >On a desktop, go nuts playing with them. On a server... Give your head a > >shake for buying IDE drives, > > Why? Top of the line IDE drives are faster than SCSI now and much cheaper. > (As long as you stick with one per channel) They come with 3 year > warranties. So they don't support command queuing like SCSI. Unless you > have extra money to spend SCSI is no longer a big advantage over IDE. In > fact, I can build very fast IDE raids for than the price of a single SCSI > card and Large SCSI Drive ( =>73 Gigs ). The IDE raid array will provide > command queuing and blow the SCSI away on performance. > > No SCSI being a requirement of a Server is no longer valid advice. The > drives may be better but you pay too a steep premium. > > -- > Mark Lane > Hard Data Ltd. > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Telephone: 01-780-456-9771 > FAX: 01-780-456-9772 > > 11060 - 166 Avenue > Edmonton, AB, Canada > T5X 1Y3 > > http://www.harddata.com/ > --> Ask me about our Affordable Alpha Systems! <-- > > > > >
