At 07:15 PM 10/23/2004, you wrote:
>I am trying to figure out how to mount a 3.5" device
>in a 5.25" bay.
You just need a 3.5 to 5.25 adaptor, which is just two rails that screw
onto the side of the hard drive, and allow it to fit a 5.25 opening.
Cyberguys is a good place to find this.
>Also, I just purchased and mounted a 74 gb WD 10,000
>rpm SATA drive and have noticed no performance gain
>over my regular IDE drive. I was
>under the impression that even a single drive that was
>SATA would offer a faster data transfer than an IDE
>drive w/an 8mb cache.
They are designed for different jobs. A Raptor is a Server drive, while
your 72K drive, I assume a WD 8MB cache, is a Desktop drive. The server
drive is made to run 24/7, with constant, heavy, access. Reliability is
more important then speed. It has a five year warranty.
If your regular IDE is another WD, or Maxtor, then it has greater platter
density, which tends to equalize performance, and only a one year warranty.
Although, I believe Seagate now, in an attempt to increase market share,
and save the company, has offered a 5 year warranty on all it's drives, but
I haven't heard of other manufacturers following suit.
>s this accurate advice? I was
>under the impression that even a single drive that was
>SATA would offer a faster data transfer than an IDE
>drive w/an 8mb cache.
SATA has big configuration advantages to PATA drives, but currently, only a
tiny performance difference. It does, however, have potential for greater
performance, which is why the industry is slowly making the move to PATA.
But for now, you will not experience performance gains going from a
comparable PATA to a SATA.
There are many types of RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks.
Hardware RAID = a special controller, is better then software RAID.
However, both use stripping to increase performance, and or reliability.
The most common desktop setup is RAID 0.
RAID LEVEL 0
Level 0 is disk striping only, which interleaves data across multiple disks
for better performance. It does not provide safeguards against
failure. RAID 0 is widely used in gaming machines for higher speed.
RAID LEVEL 1
Uses disk mirroring, which provides 100% duplication of data. Offers
highest reliability, but doubles storage cost. RAID 1 is widely used in
business applications.
RAID LEVEL 2
Bits (rather than bytes or groups of bytes) are interleaved across multiple
disks. The Connection Machine used this technique, but this is a rare method.
RAID LEVEL 3
Data are striped across three or more drives. Used to achieve the highest
data transfer, because all drives operate in parallel. Parity bits are
stored on separate, dedicated drives.
RAID LEVEL 4
Similar to Level 3, but manages disks independently rather than in
unison. Not often used.
RAID LEVEL 5
Data are striped across three or more drives for performance, and parity
bits are used for fault tolerance. The parity bits from two drives are
stored on a third drive. RAID 5 is widely used on servers to provide speed
and fault tolerance.
RAID LEVEL 6
Highest reliability, but not widely used. Similar to RAID 5, but does two
different parity computations or the same computation on overlapping
subsets of the data.
RAID LEVEL 10
A combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0 combined. Raid 0 is used for
performance, and RAID 1 is used for fault tolerance.
Todays drives are so quick, that I don't necessarily find RAID worthwhile,
unless you have a real need, like 3D modeling, or professional level video
editing, where you are currently "experiencing" slow hard drive performance.
RAID is very hard on drives, which is why manufacturers are starting to
produce drives particular suited to RAID. Too many desktop drives, that
were used for RAID are coming back under warranty.
If you are looking for a "Gee Whiz" experience from a hard drive upgrade,
you will have to get yourself a 15000 RPM SCSI Seagate Cheetah. You will
need a SCSI controller that supports it, and a cable which will cost you 30
to 50 bucks, that will handle a lot of drives, and you will need some kind
of hard drive cooling for it. 15K Cheetahs are noisy, run hot, and there
will be a learning curve so take your time, and make sure you know what
your doing, before you buy. Don't cut corners, tying to save money when
working with SCSI, and don't expect too much.
Todays, off the shelf IDE Desktop drives are very fast with very good
platter density. And cheap RAM, and better OS memory utilization, has
overcome the swap file bottleneck. I, myself, have so much RAM that I don't
even use a hard drive swap file. I use a RAM DISK for my swap file. And RAM
is thousands times faster then any hard drive.
Beyond that, in order to have a "Gee Whiz" experience I think you have to
have a real need for the increase in hard drive speed. For example, a
heavily accessed sever where you are experiencing slow downs, or a
workstation that has a job which is constantly accessing the hard drive,
and noticeably lagging. These days, it is more about how the drive is used,
rather then just how fast the drive will go.
You might own a Ferrari F40 that can hit 200 miles an hour, or a 10
cylinder Dodge truck, that can haul huge trailer loads, but if you only use
them to drive the speed limit, and or mundane shopping trips, then they are
no different then any other car, even though they have the potential to do
so much more.
Almost everyone I have known, that has pursued hard drive performance,
sometimes at great cost, has, in the end, have been disappointed. So I
would advise you to take your time, and whenever possible, test or at least
see an example, before you start spending money. And be forewarned, that
the move to SCSI, relative to IDE, ... is big money.
Rode
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