IDE vs. SCSI reliability

[Googer]

He is correct, SCSI is the only way to go in your situation. Loosing a few files will cost your company more than the cost of the SCSI HDD. Just remember SCSI has builting error checking, is designed for 24/7 use over a 5 year period, and has industiral grade parts. You really do get what you pay for, In the past 4 years I have had 2 IDE Drives fail- One Samsung and one maxtor. IDE cannot take the abuse that SCSI can and
begins to choke when more than 2 users try try to acces it over a network; SCSI wont do that. IDE was designd 8 hours of use per day for 3-5 years, that is how they figure for the warreties. If anyone doubts me just look on most HDD manufacturers websites.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally PMed by: mechBgon
Congratulations on the new position! I'm tempted to say you should try to wriggle out of being the guy left holding the bag on that decision. You know that the minute anything were to go wrong... yeah. You get the blame.

Small picture: as a "near-line storage" solution, I suppose IDE RAID1 could be ok. I would do a software mirror in Windows Disk Management on the two drives, and make their partitions about 5% smaller than their full capacity just so you would have an easy time repairing the mirror later when a drive fails, even if the new drive is slightly lower in capacity than the dead one.

One of the nice things about software mirroring is that if half of the mirror goes down, the other half ought to be recoverable to any computer, it has nothing to do with any specific RAID card or controller. Just check on the mirror every week or less to ensure it's still alive, and give the drives forced-air cooling to ensure they stay nice and comfy As for drives, I would probably use Seagate 7200.7's if the usage is going to be as light as it sounds.

Anyway, the software RAID1 is what we do at work, with SCSI drives in our case. It's saved our bacon on our older server once... when one drive failed, we bought a new pair of drives, restored the mirror with one of the two, then replaced the surviving old drive with another new one and restored the mirror again. Piece of cake

Big picture: If it were me, I would probably recommend a pair of 73GB Seagate Cheetah 10k.6 or 10k.7's and move ALL of your data files to them after they pass about a week of burn-in. If your 18GB SCSI drives are as old as the P3-powered server, then I would start being a little leery of putting my eggs in their basket, so to speak. Use 'em in RAID1 for just the OS, and put your data on the 73GB SCSI RAID1.

At Newegg, 73GB Cheetah 10k.7's are US$290. So maybe $800-$1000 Canadian for a pair of them. If you have a fan-cooled hot-swap backplane thingie like you described, you can simply plop them in the caddies (80-pin SCA2) and not have to get a new controller, cable or terminator.

For a backup solution, if you want to do USB then you should consider whether the server will take a USB 2.0 card, or any USB card. If it's WinNT 4.0 Server, then AFAIK USB is a pure impossibility because the OS can't do it. If it's got USB 1.1 onboard, remember how slow that's going to be, backing up ~20GB of data at 1MB/sec. Ouch.

At any rate, remember that choosing the SCSI drive(s) doesn't necessarily rule out USB backup, but make sure USB backup is even an option, too. Since your data is your livelihood for more than a dozen people, I would go high-roller and say 80GB Quantum DLT1 SCSI tape drive and software, ten tapes and a cleaning tape, and have three Friday tapes in rotation, two of which are at the bank in a safe-deposit box. It's data insurance, just like you guys undoubtedly carry other types of insurance too. Amortize it over five years and call it a business expense and write it off

Hope those random mumblings help with the brainstorming.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Googer
He is correct, SCSI is the only way to go in your situation. Loosing a few files will cost your company more than the cost of the SCSI HDD. Just remember SCSI has builting error checking, is designed for 24/7 use over a 5 year period, and has industiral grade parts. You really do get what you pay for, In the past 4 years I have had 2 IDE Drives fail- One Samsung and one maxtor. IDE cannot take the abuse that SCSI can and
begins to choke when more than 2 users try try to acces it over a network; SCSI wont do that. IDE was designd 8 hours of use per day for 3-5 years, that is how they figure for the warreties. If anyone doubts me just look on most HDD manufacturers websites.

Ahhhh...a direct answer to my initial question...at long last. Thank you. :beer:

Now I've gotta re-make a decision that I had already made...

Maybe I'll just go with the single SCSI drive that the uber tech reccomended. $700 just seems like way too much to me for that capacity. Look at how cheap the 74GB Raptor is.

 

[Googer]

Software raid blows in a mutiuser configuration. High point has never offerd any thing exciting in the raid controller market. as far as SCSI is concernd LSI logic offers one of the best perfoming Hardware Raid Controllers that out performs Adaptec in both features and disc performance.
LSI Logic's real claim to fame is their unmatched driver support- It is the first thing that comes to mind when you say that name to any one with expience in this area. Pissing off and loosing a client sucks; Your data is worth more than the savings and productivity loss of going with IDE, Trust me.

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=16-118-013&depa=0

I have dealt with adaptec, but lsi is way way better!

http://www.lsilogic.com/produc...scsi_raid/3202064.html
As far as drives are concerned Fujitsu has consistanly made some of the fastest HDD's at competitive prices. They are faster than Seagate or
Hitachi(IBM).

 

[Googer]

PCI Express HBA

http://www.lsilogic.com/produc...d/megaraid_320_2e.html

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Googer
Software raid blows in a mutiuser configuration. High point has never offerd any thing exciting in the raid controller market. as far as SCSI is concernd LSI logic offers one of the best perfoming Hardware Raid Controllers that out performs Adaptec in both features and disc performance.
LSI Logic's real claim to fame is their unmatched driver support- It is the first thing that comes to mind when you say that name to any one with expience in this area. Pissing off and loosing a client sucks; Your data is worth more than the savings and productivity loss of going with IDE, Trust me.

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=16-118-013&depa=0

As far as drives are concerned Fujitsu has consistanly made some of the fastest HDD's at competitive prices. They are faster than Seagate or
Hitachi(IBM).

The server already has a SCSI controller, why spend money to no end? According to my uber tech, the Fujitsu drives have taken a dive in terms of reliability lately. He said they *used* to be the best.

You make it sound like an IDE RAID-1 setup is likely to fail. I would say you have better odds winning the lottery than you do witnessing two IDE drives fail simultaneously.

You also seem to be forgetting that performance is not an issue in this case. We do no DB work, and it is not an application server. It's a file/print/internet server, that's all. The files are all AutoCAD .dwg files for the most part. Some photos, some documents.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Googer
He is correct, SCSI is the only way to go in your situation. Loosing a few files will cost your company more than the cost of the SCSI HDD. Just remember SCSI has builting error checking, is designed for 24/7 use over a 5 year period, and has industiral grade parts. You really do get what you pay for, In the past 4 years I have had 2 IDE Drives fail- One Samsung and one maxtor. IDE cannot take the abuse that SCSI can and
begins to choke when more than 2 users try try to acces it over a network; SCSI wont do that.

IDE drives do fine with far more than two users, unless you're on GbE maybe. File transfers hardly use the drives at all. If not on GbE, the network is the biggest bottleneck. On GbE, you're still not dealing with a major difference until you get into SCSI RAID 10 or 5, which would likely be overkill.
For a DB or mail server, I'd agree with SCSI all the way; but for files, you would need a serious load to be make the bottleneck not the network.

IDE was designd 8 hours of use per day for 3-5 years, that is how they figure for the warreties. If anyone doubts me just look on most HDD manufacturers websites.

Yes, hence you use RAID. That's the point: you know drives fail. SCSI or IDE. With redundancy being more important than fast random access, IDE isn't bad. Given the cost, for RAID 1 or 5 (software RAID 5 is almost unbearable, BTW, and software RAID 1 isn't fantastic, but not terrible--a decent RAID card will be worth the cost), basic ATA drives offer a great solution. With RAID, you are fully prepared for failure, and downtime will be extremely minimal. If the machine isn't too tangled up, half an hour might be quite over the real time.

SCSI is not a bad way to go, and if you have the budget, don't think twice. But ATA is hardly crap for this use.

 

[Googer]

The server already has a SCSI controller, why spend money to no end? According to my uber tech, the Fujitsu drives have taken a dive in terms of reliability lately.

I was un-aware of both of those facts.


Just remember this: you get what you pay for. It's aint worth it to cut corners in buisness because it will come back and bite you in the butt. Stick to what you "UBER-TECH" says because he is 100% correct in recommending SCSI. Besides it is doubtful that you will ever full up more than half of the 74gb if all you do is save a few files on it.

I have had 2 ide drives fail from 2 differant companies. And that is just in my home computer. Stick to scsi it is LESS likely to fail when you need it most.

 

[Pariah]

Sickbeast, people aren't reading your original post. They see the word "server," and automatically dismiss ATA, and start chirping about SCSI. You already have SCSI for the system drives that will handle the bulk of the work and activity which IS recommended. For a rarely accessed archival drive where capacity is more important, SCSI doesn't make sense since performance is irrelevant, and on a $/GB ratio, ATA with redundancy will destroy SCSI. SCSI RAID 5 is almost comical for what you want. It has to be said that RAID is NOT a backup method, it's protection against a hardware failure, though not a catastrophic one (computer gets hit by lighting, you can kiss both drives goodbye). The safest you can keep your data is having one drive online at all times, and an external drive you make regular backups to.

Your plan in the first post is your best option, though again, you don't need the the ATA RAID card and 2nd 200GB internal drive if you have the 250GB external drive. Try pricing out a 200GB SCSI RAID 5 array, and you are looking at significantly higher cost of entry along with lower data security.

 

[jose]

SickBeast,

Since your server already has a scsi cntrl then get a 73g scsi drive for addl. storage . You'll have to search pricewatch alot for a good deal. Watchout for crappy vendors..

What type of backup solution are you looking at ?? You can find a scsi dds4 (20/40gig) tape drive for about $350.

If the owners want raid then explain they need to do it right. The cost is cheap nowadays.. For raid5 you need min. of 3 drives & I'd recomend havind a addl drive as a hot spare.
As far as drives go you can find 36g 10k4 drives w/ 5yr warranty for about $144ea.

Some of the drives I get are actually dell oem drives which are a very good deal. If your server has sca support , then you'll find even better deals on scsi drives.

Regards,
Jose

 

[mechBgon]

Software raid blows in a mutiuser configuration.

Where are you getting that from? I'm serving the following items for about 80 employees using software mirroring:

• Each employee's personal files
• Five networked laser printers and networked photocopiers (and I might add that I've had employees send print jobs of up to 1GB to our Tektronix via the server before :shocked: they DO get used!)
• Exchange 5.5, which is database-based
• McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, which is also database-driven (SQL Server)
• McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i of course
• Primary Domain Controller duties
• Veritas Backup Exec 7.something, handling backup for itself plus the BDC too

All on a P3 933 with 1.5GB of PC133. Typical CPU load in full business operation: 5%.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Sickbeast, people aren't reading your original post. They see the word "server," and automatically dismiss ATA, and start chirping about SCSI. You already have SCSI for the system drives that will handle the bulk of the work and activity which IS recommended. For a rarely accessed archival drive where capacity is more important, SCSI doesn't make sense since performance is irrelevant, and on a $/GB ratio, ATA with redundancy will destroy SCSI. SCSI RAID 5 is almost comical for what you want. It has to be said that RAID is NOT a backup method, it's protection against a hardware failure, though not a catastrophic one (computer gets hit by lighting, you can kiss both drives goodbye). The safest you can keep your data is having one drive online at all times, and an external drive you make regular backups to.

Your plan in the first post is your best option, though again, you don't need the the ATA RAID card and 2nd 200GB internal drive if you have the 250GB external drive. Try pricing out a 200GB SCSI RAID 5 array, and you are looking at significantly higher cost of entry along with lower data security.

Thanks very much Pariah, you've been extremely helpful.

I figure that so long as I only transfer projects from the SCSI to the ATA drive just before I back up to the USB external, I won't need RAID-1 for the ATAs.

It's genius, and saves tons of $$$. Thank you very much, I have a feeling this upgrade is gonna make me look good (and my colleagues will appreciate no longer having to back up onto 3 tapes every week). :beer:

Thanks again to everyone else who contributed, even if I'm not going with what you reccomended. I learned alot from this thread.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: jose
SickBeast,

Since your server already has a scsi cntrl then get a 73g scsi drive for addl. storage . You'll have to search pricewatch alot for a good deal. Watchout for crappy vendors..

What type of backup solution are you looking at ?? You can find a scsi dds4 (20/40gig) tape drive for about $350.

If the owners want raid then explain they need to do it right. The cost is cheap nowadays.. For raid5 you need min. of 3 drives & I'd recomend havind a addl drive as a hot spare.
As far as drives go you can find 36g 10k4 drives w/ 5yr warranty for about $144ea.

Some of the drives I get are actually dell oem drives which are a very good deal. If your server has sca support , then you'll find even better deals on scsi drives.

Regards,
Jose

The owners don't know what RAID is, but they are extemely concerned about protecting their data. In my opinion, mirroring the two 18GB SCSIs in RAID-1 is "doing it right" (which really makes me wonder about the uber tech...why purchase two identical drives but not mirror them?).

The 200GB IDE drive will set us back only $110CDN or so. That type of storage does not exist in a SCSI drive as far as I know, and if it does it would cost a huge sum of money. Even if we were to go with the 74GB SCSI, it would cost a mimimum of $200CDN, however I'm skeptical of whether or not I can find a drive of that caibre for so little.

We already have a 20GB SCSI tape backup system, which I plan to keep and use to back up the 18GB drives in RAID-1 every few days or so (maybe even just once a week, 3-4 days after I backup the whole server to the USB external drive).

I'll check out what Dell has to offer, but in Canada we typically pay more for hardware from vendors like Dell and Apple because they don't give us a fair dollar exchange (especially as of late with the 83 cent $CDN).

What I would really like is a local store in Toronto where I can just walk in and buy something. I need to look for a SCSI specialty store of some sort.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Googer

The server already has a SCSI controller, why spend money to no end? According to my uber tech, the Fujitsu drives have taken a dive in terms of reliability lately.

I was un-aware of both of those facts.


Just remember this: you get what you pay for. It's aint worth it to cut corners in buisness because it will come back and bite you in the butt. Stick to what you "UBER-TECH" says because he is 100% correct in recommending SCSI. Besides it is doubtful that you will ever full up more than half of the 74gb if all you do is save a few files on it.

I have had 2 ide drives fail from 2 differant companies. And that is just in my home computer. Stick to scsi it is LESS likely to fail when you need it most.

The problem is the uber tech proposes spending $700, when only $100 is required in this case. I see your logic, but $600 is a huge portion of our computer hardware budget.

I will have the data that is on the IDE drives in two places at all times, and one of those places will be at my colleague's condo. The data will be safe and this is not an example of cutting corners. It's an example of how to save money on a hardware upgrade and gain storage capacity and convienience to boot. :beer:

 

[RadiclDreamer]

If you are building a server that has to reliable, you are a complete moron if you dont use SCSI. They use higher quality parts and last much longer. They are also faster. Dont be cheap on a server, use SCSI

 

[Googer]

The owners don't know what RAID is, but they are extemely concerned about protecting their data.

The only use SCSI, If data INTEGRITY is so important to them, then do not use IDE. Scsi drives are built using Industruial grade Parts and motors. IDE drives are disposable while SCSI drives are built to last. All that extra storage will be usesless in the event of failure and It will cost 3k to have data recoverd from a dead drive (not including down time and lost productivivty) it is far cheaper to get scsi now and prevent such costly disasters. Don't stray away from what is a proven fact: SCSI drives fail less often than IDE.

SCSI has a 1 to 1.2 million mean time before failure
VS
IDE that has much lower 100,000 to 250,000 M.T.B.F.'

Refurbished IDE Drives are a Dime a Dozen.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I agree with Googer.

Think of it this way, doyou REALLY think they charge 4x teh price for SCSI just because they are a little faster or because the interface is different? No, they charge more because they are using BETTER PARTS to make the drive. Its a no brainer to go with SCSI for a server.

 

[Googer]

The lower cost drives like IDE, ATA, etc. will most likely use less exotic (and less expensive) components and have lower ratings for vibration, temperature, shock and acoustics. You will see MTBF ratings in the 300,000 to 500,000 hour ranges, and lower duty cycles (say 20% rather than 100%). Also look for variations in POH (power on hours) and start/stop cycles. It all comes down to the old adage "you get what you pay for."

Taken from:
http://searchstorage.techtarge...sid5_gci952825,00.html

IDE is more likely to fail because cheaper parts and the inabilty to take teperature's that it generates.

Trust me beast when one of these drives fails and some data is lost It will be you that they come after. It aint worth your job, especially since it aint your money that you are trying to save.. So why worry?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
If you are building a server that has to reliable, you are a complete moron if you dont use SCSI. They use higher quality parts and last much longer. They are also faster. Dont be cheap on a server, use SCSI

Maybe you should try reading the thread and using some common logic. The IDE drive will be rarely accessed. As in once a month, if that. As I said, that drive will be mirrored onto the external USB drive, so no data can ever possibly be lost due to a drive failing.

I consider someone who burns up $600 on a hardware budget unneccessarily a moron. My suggestion which has been supported by others here makes perfect sense and I really fail to see the necessity of SCSI in this case.

If I can find a SCSI drive for $200 I will probably reccomend it, otherwise I have no issues going with IDE.

 

[Googer]

IDE has a low 20% duity cycle, Versus scsi that has a 100% duity cycle.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
If you are building a server that has to reliable, you are a complete moron if you dont use SCSI. They use higher quality parts and last much longer. They are also faster. Dont be cheap on a server, use SCSI

Maybe you should try reading the thread and using some common logic. The IDE drive will be rarely accessed. As in once a month, if that. As I said, that drive will be mirrored onto the external USB drive, so no data can ever possibly be lost due to a drive failing.

I consider someone who burns up $600 on a hardware budget unneccessarily a moron. My suggestion which has been supported by others here makes perfect sense and I really fail to see the necessity of SCSI in this case.

If I can find a SCSI drive for $200 I will probably reccomend it, otherwise I have no issues going with IDE.

Regardless, the drive will still be spinning, thus putting wear on the drive. Dont come back bitching that you lost their data and now need something to recover it when those IDE drives take a dump on you

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Googer

The lower cost drives like IDE, ATA, etc. will most likely use less exotic (and less expensive) components and have lower ratings for vibration, temperature, shock and acoustics. You will see MTBF ratings in the 300,000 to 500,000 hour ranges, and lower duty cycles (say 20% rather than 100%). Also look for variations in POH (power on hours) and start/stop cycles. It all comes down to the old adage "you get what you pay for."

Taken from:
http://searchstorage.techtarge...sid5_gci952825,00.html

IDE is more likely to fail because cheaper parts and the inabilty to take teperature's that it generates.

Trust me beast when one of these drives fails and some data is lost It will be you that they come after. It aint worth your job, especially since it aint your money that you are trying to save.. So why worry?

That's one way of looking at it, and it's probably why the tech guys have a horrible reputation in my industry of reccomending insanely expensive hardware that isn't always neccessary. Nobody wants to risk their ass to help make their client/company money.

I've reached a point in my career where I am in extremely high demand. If this job doesn't pan out, I can find another one within two weeks. Not only that, but I'm confident in my hardware upgrade scheme and am not even remotely concerned about my firm losing its data.

BTW, my computer case here is hotter than the Sahara and I have yet to have an IDE drive fail. It's used heavily every day as opposed to once a month.

I don't disagree that SCSI is far more reliable, but in this case I don't think it's a concern so long as I back up the data properly every week. The critical data will all be on the SCSI RAID-1 array and backed up onto tape anyways. :beer:

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
If you are building a server that has to reliable, you are a complete moron if you dont use SCSI. They use higher quality parts and last much longer. They are also faster. Dont be cheap on a server, use SCSI

Maybe you should try reading the thread and using some common logic. The IDE drive will be rarely accessed. As in once a month, if that. As I said, that drive will be mirrored onto the external USB drive, so no data can ever possibly be lost due to a drive failing.

I consider someone who burns up $600 on a hardware budget unneccessarily a moron. My suggestion which has been supported by others here makes perfect sense and I really fail to see the necessity of SCSI in this case.

If I can find a SCSI drive for $200 I will probably reccomend it, otherwise I have no issues going with IDE.

Regardless, the drive will still be spinning, thus putting wear on the drive. Dont come back bitching that you lost their data and now need something to recover it when those IDE drives take a dump on you

I'll just walk 5 minutes to the local computer store, buy a new drive, and copy the USB external drive onto it. What's that, an hour of downtime on the archival drive? Nobody will even notice in all liklihood.

As I said, I *can't* lose their data if I back up properly.

 

[Googer]

agreed, these drives are rated for power on time not by usage or the amout of data transferred.

IT'S YOUR CARRER YOU CAN JEPORDIZE IT ANY WAY YOU LIKE. BUT WHEN YOU GET FIRED, ASK YOUR SELF WAS IT RELLY WORTH IT? BECAUSE YOU DID NOT SAVE YOUR SELF ANY MONEY. I HAVE SEEN THIS HAPPEN BEFORE.

Just because you are making back-ups does not mean that all data will have made the scheduled backup. The cost of recreating that work will be much higher than $1,000 (let make sure we are on the same page, I am using USA not CDN dollars).


1,000 usd = 1,000,000 canadian.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Googer
agreed, these drives are rated for power on time not by usage or the amout of data transferred.

IT'S YOUR CARRER YOU CAN JEPORDIZE IT ANY WAY YOU LIKE. BUT WHEN YOU GET FIRED, ASK YOUR SELF WAS IT RELLY WORTH IT? BECAUSE YOU DID NOT SAVE YOUR SELF ANY MONEY. I HAVE SEEN THIS HAPPEN BEFORE.

Just because you are making back-ups does not mean that all data will have made the scheduled backup. The cost of recreating that work will be much higher than $1,000 (let make sure we are on the same page, I am using USA not CDN dollars).


1,000 usd = 1,000,000 canadian.

Googer, you're still not understanding the situation. Maybe I should edit my OP again. Basically here's the deal:

- all active projects will be saved to SCSI RAID-1
- all archived projects (meaning they will never be modified, they are just there for our records and in case we want to look at them while working on a future project) will be saved to the IDE drive and backed up to USB

So what I'm saying is the data WILL make the scheduled backup, because new files will only be added to the IDE drive BY ME once a week a few minutes before I back up the entire drive to USB. So yes, some data will be at risk once a week for a few minutes. Is that really something to sweat and lose sleep about? There's always the chance of a SCSI drive failing anyways.

These odds are so minute that they are not worth spending money to protect against. It would be like wearing a platinum tin foil hat because you're worried about being struck by lightning.

That said, I will be investigating a SCSI drive if one can be obtained for under $300 and will suit our needs. 74GB isn't very much considering the volume of data we generate, but I suppose we could live with it for the time being.

I really do think though that IDE RAID-1 is more suitable to what I'm doing here and would give me more capacity and redundancy.