New Motherboard, new discisions....

[kannibul]

I use my computer for recording, gaming, and other mundane tasks.

This past weekend, I bought the following:

MSI 6565-FISR Motherboard:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...&MODEL=MS-6565

Intel Celeron 2.0 GHz (for now, will have a Hyper-threading chip later, the board cost me $250!)

2x512MB Corsair 333 CAS2 RAM, setup for Dual Channel.

OK. so, Now, remember I was looking at SCSI RAID? I have the card on order, an AMI MegaRAID Express 500, Ultra 160 and so on.

Now, with this new board, I have built in Serial ATA support, Serial ATA RAID support, Firewire, and USB 2.0

My thought is to ditch the idea of going SCSI, for Serial ATA, either straight up, or setup as a RAID 0 array with a pair. What about firewire? That stuff is fast as hell from what I have heard.

which way should I go?

1) use the Express 500 with 2 Maxtor Atlas IV 36GB drives.

2) Get a single Serial ATA Drive (recomendations welcom) and ditch the Express/Atlas idea

3) Same as #2, but get two drives, and set it up for RAID-0

4) Get a firewire drive along with #2

Thanks!

[Kineda]

I saw a toms hardware review of serial ata vs scsi i will try and find the link to it but it was a few months ago, but i know what your going through as well as a lot of us as well. When is serial ata going to be the badass solution we are looking for or is it worth our time.... there are advantages and disadvantages to sata.

Advantages:
1. Larger drives than scsi for a lot cheaper
2. Currently 150mb/s but will be moving to 300mb/s as the technology is accepted
3. SATA now has 10k rpm drives too now
There are more but this is what i remember off the top of my head, i will look for the article

Disadvantages
1. Currently there are only 2 manufacturers i know of that design sata drives
2. Drives are hard to find because stock is limited
3. SATA requires a special power connector that is not always included with the drive or the motherboard
4. Unfortunately you can have only 1 drive per channel
5. 150mb/s is damn fast but want that 300mb/s much much more

I haven't had a chance to build a system to test it out yet but i think SATA would be pretty cool, one more thing to consider is that SATA may work great but it is new technology and may have bugs for a little while, SCSI is stable fast and you can expand tremendously per channel but scsi devices are a lot more expensive.

If anyone can add to this please do i will search for the link to the article giving direct comparisons between scsi and sata, until then hope this helps

[kannibul]

Originally posted by Kineda
I saw a toms hardware review of serial ata vs scsi i will try and find the link to it but it was a few months ago, but i know what your going through as well as a lot of us as well. When is serial ata going to be the badass solution we are looking for or is it worth our time.... there are advantages and disadvantages to sata.

Advantages:
1. Larger drives than scsi for a lot cheaper
2. Currently 150mb/s but will be moving to 300mb/s as the technology is accepted
3. SATA now has 10k rpm drives too now
There are more but this is what i remember off the top of my head, i will look for the article

Disadvantages
1. Currently there are only 2 manufacturers i know of that design sata drives
2. Drives are hard to find because stock is limited
3. SATA requires a special power connector that is not always included with the drive or the motherboard
4. Unfortunately you can have only 1 drive per channel
5. 150mb/s is damn fast but want that 300mb/s much much more

I haven't had a chance to build a system to test it out yet but i think SATA would be pretty cool, one more thing to consider is that SATA may work great but it is new technology and may have bugs for a little while, SCSI is stable fast and you can expand tremendously per channel but scsi devices are a lot more expensive.

If anyone can add to this please do i will search for the link to the article giving direct comparisons between scsi and sata, until then hope this helps

The Western Digital Raptor drive vs. the Maxtor Atlas IV U320 drive are about the same cost. About $30 more for the Atlas.

Keep in mind that these two spin the same rate, and are the same capacity.
Speed wise, the U320 has a smaller latency, and the interface is quicker.

I dunno. I think I'm going to lean towards SCSI RAID-0