OK, here's my tuppence-worth (about 3 cents, so you're getting good value)
Don't bother with SCSI. For a cost-effective and, above all, fast solution, use a pair of the biggest, fastest ATA disks you can find with a RAID controller, configured as RAID-0. This stripes the data across the pair of disks, effectively doubling the transfer rate (less a little overhead). I use a set-up like that with a couple of 40GB drives, and it handles even pretty big raster files very fast. BTW, has anyone noticed what a good games machine this would make? Imagine Half-Life or Unreal Tournament on that - yummy! GrahamOB Slaving away in London UK ----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Vick, Europa Technologies Ltd." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: 12 September 2002 23:32 Subject: RE: MI-L Hardware Specs > > Hello, > > Why would all three disks be working at the same time? Once the OS is > loaded, it may only occasionally load extra components. Ditto for > applications. There used to be a case for putting the swap file on a drive > of it's own but with 1GB of memory, it's unlikely one will see any page > swaps unless the user runs half a dozen apps at the same time. > > My recommendation is to upgrade to a good SCSI disk controller and Ultra-160 > drives. In my experience, disk speed is as important as the processor with > memory only a problem if you don' t have enough. Lots of excess memory is > not going to make the machine faster. > > Regards, > Warren Vick > Europa Technologies Ltd. > http://www.europa-tech.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 10:49 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: MI-L Hardware Specs > > > As long as you are building a machine, I would suggest that you use three > separate hard drives. put the OS on one, the programs on the second, and > the > data on the third. the first two can be 5 to 10 gig in size (you use the > spare space for temp storage and print spooling). The third should be large. > this is more efficient and will speed up data transfer (instead of having > the > head of one HD doing all the work, you have three HD's working > independently). You should also have a back up (removable?) hard drive (or > two) for long term data storage (just in case your main storage drive goes > bad - it is hell when that happens). > > you did not specify your bus speed/memory speed. there are new memory chips > (very expensive) that work at 5 to 10 times the speed (data transfer) of the > SDRAM > > s. figuers > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Message number: 3014 > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Message number: 3015 > --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 3016
