Max, Paul or other techies: what do I need to know re:

[Noel 4,487]

I am contemplating using the Seagate X15 drives in my next machine. As in two of the 18GB drives, probably NOT in a SCSI RAID array, but just because they appear to be quite reliable with a MTBF of 1,200,000 hours and 5y warranty, super fast, and not too noisy. I have never set up a SCSI drive system. Is there any reason besides cost NOT to move up to this storage option, especially when it comes to FS2002? You can get these for about $204 now, and then add a good SCSI Ultra 160 controller for maybe $150 to $200 or so. From the user testimony I'm reading they really do perform well with "day to day tasks."Noel

[Guest PaulL01]

Hi Noel,Sorry, I cant really advise you here. Just didn't want you to get the idea you were being ignored. :)Paul

[Guest Funky D]

Hi Noel,I can't comment on the newer drives, but I purchased a first generation 10k RPM Cheetah a little over 3 years ago. The only disadvantages (besides cost) were heat and noise. This particular drive required active cooling, and it sounded like a jet turbine spooling up whenever I turned on my computer. During normal operation it produced an annoying high-pitched whine.I was doing a lot of digital audio work at the time and thought I needed this blazing fast drive. The 9 gigs quickly vanished, and I purchased a 27GB Maxtor IDE drive less than a year later. After using the drives side-by-side for a while, I realized the Cheetah wasn't really noticably faster than the Maxtor. I unplugged the Cheetah, regained some of my hearing, and sold it a year later on e-bay.The Cheetah did have some crazy on-board diagnostic electonics. My drive developed some bad sectors after I (somewhat violently) bumped it. When the drive tried writing to these sectors, it made a low beeping noise and (I'm assuming) marked the sector as "bad" and wrote the data somewhere else. I'm not sure if the newer IDE drives have similar technology.I found some info on the X15 at the link below. They mention the drive doesn't need active cooling unless it's in a cramped case, but they compare the noise level to that of my old Cheetah 9LP.http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2000...318451LW_5.htmlIf you want added reliablility in an IDE solution, you could always go with a mirrored RAID setup. IMO, SCSI is best left for the gigantic database servers tucked away in a company's basement.Paul

[Guest]

To me it really sounds like a waste of good money, you can get a 40Gig 7200 RPM hard drive for around $100, that would provide very good performance. You would be hard pressed to see any noticable difference in your performance, FS2K2 or otherwise. Now if you were to do benchmarks comparing the two types of drives you would certainly see the SCSI beat out the IDE, but unless you were using the machine as a hard core server or do a lot of disk intensive mulitasking, you just won't see much benefit in going SCSI. I am a real believer in the cost to performance ratio and hate to see a lot of money spent to get that last bit of a possible performance increase. Scott..