New Build: SCSI, SATA, Raid?

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coo-coo-clocker

Limp Gawd
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Sep 6, 2007
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I am planning a build for the wife's new PC. She does a lot of video editing work, and demands good performance and high reliability. For these reasons, I've always used SCSI in her machines I've built over the years.

One thing she needs in the new build is larger capacity drives. I currently have several U160 cheetah's and a few U320 cheetah's. They are the older 10k 73GB drives, but using the existing drives in the new build would be desirable, since they have plenty of life left in them. I have an old adaptec U320 controller, but it's PCI-X and so it isnt fully exploited (mobo doesn't support PCI-X).

I have done a lot of research the last couple of days on 'latest/greatest' to see if I can switch to SATA for the new build. Honestly, I can't seem to zero in on conclusive data to help with my decision:
U320 Roundup
Seagate's 15K.5 Cheetah or 15K.6 Cheetah
Good discussion here about SAS vs VRaptor
SCSI vs. SATA

To switch over to SAS seems a bit like overkill. A decent SAS/SATA controller is going to run me about $300 (or way up from there!). I would then be mixing SAS and SCSI drives and don't know if I want to mess with that. SAS drives are still insanely overpriced.

SATA 3.0 performance is certainly closing in on SCSI, but the reliability and performance for demanding I/O like video editing isn't quite there yet. The VRaptors are pricey. I could get 300 GB cheetah 15k.5 for $100 less than the VRaptor.

If I stay with U320, I will most likely spring for a 320 PCI-e controller, and then look at picking up a couple of the newer 300GB U320 drives... and that means about $600. But I will be able to use the existing cheetahs (they're a nice size for O/S boot drive and maybe swap file).

On the decision of "to raid or not to raid", I currently do not use any raid for her system. The SCSI drives are so dependable (never had one fail in over 15 years), I have never really thought about using Raid for the fault-tolerance. Perhaps I could look into Raid 0 for improved performance...I would need to research to see if it makes a noticeable difference for this application.

What do you guys think about my research and options here? Am I missing any key points? Any recommendations?
 
You mentioned that you have several older 10k U160/U320 scsi drives that you would like you re-use. I think you will find that you will be disappointed with the performance of these drives in a current system. Keep in mind that although SCSI has it’s merits, it is faster in certain situations often only due to brute force, which is why you typically see 15k scsi drives neck and neck with 10k raptors. Take away that spindle speed advantage by only using a 10k scsi drive and often times what you have is something that can barely compete with a modern 7200rpm drive in benchmarks. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t re-use them but I just wouldn’t expect anything great from them just because they are 10krpm or because they are SCSI.

On the other hand you could probably get by just fine using your older U320 controller, even if it is PCI-X, in a regular PCI slot. Typical modern systems aren’t going to really have anything else on the PCI bus anymore, so even though the PCI bus is limited to 133MB/sec you will potentially have that all to your SCSI drives.

I’m running my Fujitsu MAU drives on an Adaptec 39160 controller in a 32-bit PCI slot and it doesn’t really bottleck the drives other than their burst speed:
fujmau.JPG

I have been extremely pleased with the performance.

Personally what I would do would be to construct the system with the existing controller and existing drives to minimize costs. On top of that buy one additional (new) SCSI drive as well as a Velociraptor. Install the OS onto one of the older SCSI drives and then for eventual video editing, etc, between the new SCSI drive and the Velociraptor, use whichever is faster depending on the task.
 
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, GNR.
Great speed on that fujitsu. I noticed that your avg read numbers are suprisingly similar to the Treadlayers MAU3073 analysis and they are using a mobo-based raid controller. But the burst is way higher on the 3073. The more I read, the 15K.5 cheetahs are looking like the way to go. It would be interesting to try a real world comparison of the VR as you suggest...
 
I've got 2 Cheetah 15k.5 drives on the way... I'll post my results with an Adaptec 31605 for you when I get a chance. Hopefully sometime next week.
 
Here are my 4x 146Gb Cheetah 15k.4 Drives in Raid0 on a Dell Perc5/i for reference.

benchread8mbiy1.png

HD Tune Pro: DELL PERC 5/i Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 188.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 347.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 288.0 MB/sec
Access Time : 6.5 ms
Burst Rate : 111.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 1.0%

filebench8mbdb6.png
 
Just for a SAS Controller / SATA drive reference - Here are my 4 VelociRaptors on an Adaptec 5405 SAS Controller in raid 5 config:

HDTUNE_R54.jpg
 
SCSI - Multi user environment with many files being accessed at once, randomly - where they excel, you can get great performance now with SATA and SAS for ALOT cheaper and quiter.
 
nitrobass24 said:
vRaptors are not SAS drives..they are SATA
Click to expand...
SAS Controllers (Adaptec 5405) can use SATA or SAS drives. A SAS controller has full bandwidth (in this case 300MB/s) on each (4 in this case) port. A SATA controller only has a total of 300MB/s.

I was referencing the way they are being used not the drive interface - sorry for the confusion

Anyway 4-10K VelociRaptors in Raid 5 almost equaling 4-15K Cheetas in Raid 0 is pretty remarkable. Even the access times are not that far off and thats where the 15K drives usually excel.
 
kewlncguy said:
SAS Controllers (Adaptec 5405) can use SATA or SAS drives. A SAS controller has full bandwidth (in this case 300MB/s) on each (4 in this case) port. A SATA controller only has a total of 300MB/s.

I was referencing the way they are being used not the drive interface - sorry for the confusion

Anyway 4-10K VelociRaptors in Raid 5 almost equaling 4-15K Cheetas in Raid 0 is pretty remarkable. Even the access times are not that far off and thats where the 15K drives usually excel.
Click to expand...

Ahh ok just making sure

And yes the vRaptors have amazing performance...although the 15k.4's are a lil outdated now, the 15k.5 perform better, and the 15k.6 450gb is a freaking beast of a drive although it comes with quite a price tag ~$800 or 1.77/ per GB.
 
kewlncguy said:
SAS Controllers (Adaptec 5405) can use SATA or SAS drives. A SAS controller has full bandwidth (in this case 300MB/s) on each (4 in this case) port. A SATA controller only has a total of 300MB/s.

I was referencing the way they are being used not the drive interface - sorry for the confusion
Click to expand...
Not true at all. SATA has 300mb/s per port.
 
What format does she edit in? DV, HDV, AVCHD all work fine with the current crop of 7200rpm SATA drives.
Our new HDV editing system uses a fast OS drive (150gig Raptor) and 2 500gig Video drives. 1 drive is for capture and editing and the other is for exporting the mpeg-2 data stream.
 
kewlncguy said:
Just for a SAS Controller / SATA drive reference - Here are my 4 VelociRaptors on an Adaptec 5405 SAS Controller in raid 5 config:

HDTUNE_R54.jpg
Click to expand...

Here are only two of my SAS SAVVIO 15k drives in RAID 0 (4 in raid 10, same as two in RAID 0)

19898506zh9.jpg
 
kewlncguy said:
SAS Controllers (Adaptec 5405) can use SATA or SAS drives. A SAS controller has full bandwidth (in this case 300MB/s) on each (4 in this case) port. A SATA controller only has a total of 300MB/s.

I was referencing the way they are being used not the drive interface - sorry for the confusion

Anyway 4-10K VelociRaptors in Raid 5 almost equaling 4-15K Cheetas in Raid 0 is pretty remarkable. Even the access times are not that far off and thats where the 15K drives usually excel.
Click to expand...

As you can see with the picture above, my two SAS 15k drives in Raid 0 kept up with your Raid 5 array using 4 VRAPTORS.
 
Zepher said:
What format does she edit in? DV, HDV, AVCHD all work fine with the current crop of 7200rpm SATA drives.
Our new HDV editing system uses a fast OS drive (150gig Raptor) and 2 500gig Video drives. 1 drive is for capture and editing and the other is for exporting the mpeg-2 data stream.
Click to expand...

I believe she edits in HDV. I recall her complaining about the export times when she creates mpeg encoding.

Ockie said:
As you can see with the picture above, my two SAS 15k drives in Raid 0 kept up with your Raid 5 array using 4 VRAPTORS.
Click to expand...
Am I misunderstanding? I figured that Raid 5 would have more overhead? Wouldn't it be intuitive that faster rotation drives in Raid 0 would perform better than slower rotation drives in Raid 5?
 
coo-coo-clocker said:
Am I misunderstanding? I figured that Raid 5 would have more overhead? Wouldn't it be intuitive that faster rotation drives in Raid 0 would perform better than slower rotation drives in Raid 5?
Click to expand...

Hence why I rebuked that comment with a screenshot and example.
 
coo-coo-clocker said:
I believe she edits in HDV. I recall her complaining about the export times when she creates mpeg encoding.
Click to expand...

That could be processor limited, not drive speed limited.
On our system, the Matrox RT.X100 card does the realtime mpeg-2 transcoding and exporting, this machine is a P4 2.0ghz with 512megs of Ram and 3 80gig IDE drives, 1 OS, 1 Capture and 1 Export.

We haven't utilized our new HD based Matrox RT.X2 system yet so I am not sure if it will do faster than real-time encoding.

just so you know, DV and HDV have the exact same data rate 25megabits/sec (or 13Gigs/Hour).
Only main differences (besides the resolution) are :
DV is uncompressed Audio, 4:1:1 color, and less compression.
HDV is compressed mpeg Audio, 4:2:0 color, and a lot of compression.

What are the rest of her Specs? Proc? Ram? Editing Software?
And how long are the encoding times vs actual video time?
Our RT.X100 is 1:1 encoding time, so a 1 hour video takes 1 hour to encode.
 
Ockie said:
As you can see with the picture above, my two SAS 15k drives in Raid 0 kept up with your Raid 5 array using 4 VRAPTORS.
Click to expand...

The average transfer rate of the Raptors is higher than the maximum transfer rate of your SAS drives. The seeks are slower on the Raptors, sure, but any significant seeking will destroy video performance anyways.

I'd still go with SAS if it's an option. Seagate makes high-capacity (1TB) SAS drives if you need the space.
 
unhappy_mage said:
The average transfer rate of the Raptors is higher than the maximum transfer rate of your SAS drives. The seeks are slower on the Raptors, sure, but any significant seeking will destroy video performance anyways.

I'd still go with SAS if it's an option. Seagate makes high-capacity (1TB) SAS drives if you need the space.
Click to expand...

By very little. I was refrencing in comment to the comment that was made. If I was to run four SAS drives in Raid 5 vs those raptors, my array would eat them for lunch.
 
WoW! There's some screaming speeds in this thread!

Color me green with envy! :D
 
Ockie said:
Hence why I rebuked that comment with a screenshot and example.
Click to expand...

Bear with me, as I am but a mere greenhorn in raid land :)
So is it that read speed is cumulative with the number of drives in Raid 0?
Example: 1 drive = 120 Mbs, 2 = 240, 3 = 360...?
 
Yes, usually, pending on the controller

i have 3 x 80G Seagate 7200.10 SATA drives in raid 0 on an intel ICH9R and i get 187MB average read speeds.
 
Ockie said:
As you can see with the picture above, my two SAS 15k drives in Raid 0 kept up with your Raid 5 array using 4 VRAPTORS.
Click to expand...

I was in RAID 5 - big difference

EDIT: Just saw this was actually a RAID 10 array - See below
 
When all factors are considered:
Price per GB
Noise
Heat
Performance
Availability

VelociRaptors clearly lead as a choice for high performance consumer storage.
 
Ockie said:
By very little. I was refrencing in comment to the comment that was made. If I was to run four SAS drives in Raid 5 vs those raptors, my array would eat them for lunch.
Click to expand...


Not with those savvios it wouldnt. Savvios have 10% less read transfer than the VelociRaptors. The do have an edge on access times but it is not worth it at twice the price per GB.

Looking at the nice sawtooth pattern on your HD Tach bechmark I would guess you benched these from a production server.
 
For further reference, if desired- Here are my 2 Cheetah 15k.5 drives in RAID 0 on an Adaptec 31605 SAS controller. They are running the OS at the time of the Benchmark.

hdtunebenchmarkadaptecarg2.png



hdtachtv9.jpg
 
Thanks for following up, Griff. Your benchmark results look good - how would you characterize the "feel" of the real-world performance? What were you running prior to the Cheetahs? That controller is a beast! $$$$
 
The feel is honestly almost as responsive as my 2x 64GB Core OCZ SSD drives. Windows boot a few seconds slower, but it's really not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Programs open up I'd say just as quick- It'd be hard to tell the difference between these drives and the OCZ SSD setup. Also, the throughput of these drives is much better in writing compared to the SSDs.

I am actually very satisfied running these drives. I thought i'd be discontent having to switch from SSD to SAS, but I am not at all. Especially since I don't have to worry about the stuttering that the SSD drives were causing.

The sound is not as bad as I thought it was going to be either. My case fans are louder than the drives are. I'd recommend SAS if you don't mind spending a little extra. My setup cost me about 550.00 total, for 2x Cheetah 15k.5 and the Adaptec card.
 
if you want im selling some 15k.4 and 15k.5 146gb cheetahs on the cheap
 
OK, so I have procured an adaptec 31605 and a couple of 15k.5 SAS 146GB cheetahs (thanks Nitro!).

Now I need cables and want to make sure I get the right thing.

I think I need the iSAS mini fan out cable??

As best as I can tell, the adaptec end needs to be SFF-8087 36-CKT Internal
and the Cheetah end needs to be: (4) Target-Based SFF-8482
29-Pin Drive Connector w/Pwr

Right?
 
OK, have the new SAS RAID installed and did a quick benchmark:
sas R0 test.jpg

sas R0 test2.jpg


Lookin' pretty good so far! I'm very pleased with how quiet and fast these Cheetah 15K.5 drives are. Thanks to all you guys for the help you've given.
 
Yea im not going to lie im kind of missing my two drives right now...:(

But I just ordered one of those 8x2.5" supermicro backplanes and got 8 10k 2.5 SAS drives im gonna throw in there so hopefully that will make up for it.

Ill post Benchies when its up.
 
Just a quick follow up. Ockie said in some other thread about being patient and watching Ebay for deals... man, I've found some fantastic bargains on these Cheetah 15k.5 drives! Picked up two brand new 146GB for just a tad over $100 each.

My message - if you're hesitating on SAS because of the cost - just watch fleabay. Bargains to be had if you're saavy and patient. RAID6 here I come :D
 
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