SCSI Upgrade

[LReese]

I'm thinking about putting a 15K SCSI drive on my 1GHz Powermac.

I am going to use the SCSI disk for a system/applications drive and use my ATA drives to store miscellaneous data. From the data I have read, I should see a huge increase in throughput. Comments?

I am looking at the Adaptec 29320 controller and the Seagate Cheetah drive. Is the 29320 compatable with the Quicksilver Powermacs?

On the other hand, I could take the money and put it into the next generation Powermac. What to do?.....

Thanks in advance.

 

[benixau]

wait. wait wait wait wait.

if you want the best apple gear, wait --

forever


look, the next pmacs will hopefully have a 970. when they do get it. thwy will have DDR RAM and be able to make much better use of that SCSI disk.


just you could be wating a long long long time.

 

[G5orbust]

Originally posted by benixau
wait. wait wait wait wait.

if you want the best apple gear, wait --

forever


look, the next pmacs will hopefully have a 970. when they do get it. thwy will have DDR RAM and be able to make much better use of that SCSI disk.


just you could be wating a long long long time.

you do have a point. Although the newer pmacs do have the same PCI bus as your quicksilver, the dual proc systems with ddr will use your scsi drive to its fullest extent. And, that SCSI drive would be a waste if its gunna be a system/ apps drive. Just buy a Sonnet ATA controller and a huge, 7200RPM ATA/1xx hd and youd be set.

 

[mc68k]

there are 3 generations of 15K Cheetah SCSI drives (68-pin) oldest to newest:

ST318451LW (U160)
ST318452LW (U160)
ST318453LW (U320)

15,000 RPM generates a lot of friction, so hopefully the tower design is enough to cool them adequately. The newer the HDD model, the better designed it is (less dB, less heat, more MB/sec).

As for the huge increase in throughput, read this IDE vs. ATA to help make up your mind.

 

[bousozoku]

On a busy system with multiple drives, you will probably see good system throughput with any SCSI compared to ATA/IDE. On a lightly loaded system with a fast or mostly-unused main processor expect ATA/IDE to do better.

On the same G3/400, I've seen my Ultra2SCSI drive outperform an ATA/100 drive on the ATA/33 interface, but on faster processors or with the ATA/133 controller, I don't expect that would be the case until the system was bogged down.

Btw, Seagate makes the same mechanisms for many of its drive lines and then attaches a certain type of controller.