Cheap RAID 73.4GB Ultra160 SCSI 10K RPM Hard Drive - $36 Shipped

S

Silvermirage

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Messages
228
Link

From what I can find out, I believe there are a bunch of these HD's on the market pulled from EMC servers recently. They are rediculously cheap and high quality...and for only $0.50/GB.

Only problem is the size. They are an irregular 1.6" tall. If you can deal with that though, you've got yourself a nice set of drives for cheap, high speed RAID.

Quick Specs:
SCSI U160
73.4GB
10,000 RPM
16MB buffer
80 pin
1.6" x 3.5"

http://www.impediment.com/seagate/s2000/spec_173404lcv.shtml

A bunch of places have these drives which have flooded the market - I think this place is cheepest though.

Something to note - 181GB 7.2K RPM SCSI (16MB buffer) hard drives have hit the market selling for about $0.45/GB along with other smaller 10k RPM HD's.

181GB 7.2K RPM
 
That is pretty neato. It's stronger than a Raptor drive, eh? I mean... like it's 160 instead of 150. It's an incredible price. Man, I wish I can get one...
 
If I had a good SCSI RAID enclosure that would fit those beasts I would be all over it.
 
those are 80pin SCA drives. you need 68pin adapters to run those unless you have a backplane :mad:
 
FLAWLESS said:
will the new intel boards support these hardrive's?
Click to expand...

Not sure how to respond, so here goes....

the new intel boards might support them on a server class board. but i don't think you really understand the drives being talked about here.
They would need 68-80 pin adapters to use them on any motherboard that came with a scsi control on board.
 
Make sure you don't use a standard PCI SCSI controller. You'll be limited by the PCI bus. You'll want to use a PCI-E one.
 
Used hard drives, huh? I've never liked that idea.
 
DriveEuro said:
Make sure you don't use a standard PCI SCSI controller. You'll be limited by the PCI bus. You'll want to use a PCI-E one.
Click to expand...

Assuming you are RAIDing.

PCI-E or 32bit 66Mhz PCI and 64bit 66Mhz PCI would work too.

Nice price, too bad I am a 68pinner...
 
just when I was about to ditch my old SCSI equipment, you show up with this. I think I'll keep it around a while longer. Thanks for the deal!

As to whether the "new intel boards support these hardrives", I think you might want to do a little research on SCSI before commiting to buying any drives. SCSI is a different type of interface from PATA or SATA and is a bit more complicated to use than either. Almost no consumer motherboards have an onboard SCSI contoller and so you'll have to buy one to install. It's similar to using a SATA controller card on an older motherboard before SATA was onboard.
 
Im looking at it, and while the drives look good, its the cards thats a problem. Say you get 6 and they do 50MB/s each, thats 300MB/s. So now you need a dual channel U160 RAID card to be able to push it. And it better be PCI-X 64Bit 66Mhz or else you will be limited by bandwidth of the bus as well. So now you need a board with 64bit PC slots.

Funny thing is, I have the adaptors and I have a dually athlon MP board with the slots, I just need the card :(.
 
inyourface1650 said:
Say you get 6 and they do 50MB/s each, thats 300MB/s. So now you need a dual channel U160 RAID card to be able to push it. And it better be PCI-X 64Bit 66Mhz or else you will be limited by bandwidth of the bus as well. So now you need a board with 64bit PC slots.
Click to expand...

Actually, the drives will probably be able to push out closer to 100 MB/s each. They are U160 which has a cap of 160MB/s. Spinning at 10k RPM (the large ones at 7.2k), they'll reach similar speeds to 36GB raptors @ 10k RPM. Also, I don't think there are too many 32 bit PCI RAID cards (SCSI or not). Some may be backwards compatible with 32 bit PCI, but you'll only be able to pump 133 MB/s out of 32 bits @ 33MHz (4 bytes * 33MHz) while the normal 64 bits @ 66MHZ will be 533MB/s.
 
Actually, the drives will probably be able to push out closer to 100 MB/s each. They are U160 which has a cap of 160MB/s. Spinning at 10k RPM (the large ones at 7.2k), they'll reach similar speeds to 36GB raptors @ 10k RPM. Also, I don't think there are too many 32 bit PCI RAID cards (SCSI or not). Some may be backwards compatible with 32 bit PCI, but you'll only be able to pump 133 MB/s out of 32 bits @ 33MHz (4 bytes * 33MHz) while the normal 64 bits @ 66MHZ will be 533MB/s.
Click to expand...

100MB/s burst transfer from the cache maybe.

It says right in the specs 42MB/s max internal transfer. Avg 35 MB/s. That's not going to touch a Raptor(Raptor is almost 50% faster) or most modern 7200RPM drives PATA or SATA. The only advantage is seek time which really only matters if you are running a database or serving numerous requests.

There are quite a few 32bit/33Mhz RAID cards. You have ~128MB/s to work with after PCI overhead, that's 3 to 4 of these drives RAID 0 to saturate the PCI bus with no other loads. The major load problem will be if you also have a Gigabit network on the PCI bus that is transfering this same data. So yeah it's limited bandwidth for advanced users. Most of those RAID cards came out before SATA, new north bridge south bridge interconnects, etc. So they were the poor man's SCSI.

Personally I'd only get these drives if I already had a SCSI setup. I do but I don't want to spend the money for a backplane enclosure or convertor. But it is a nice deal for those with SCSI already.
 
aicjofs said:
The only advantage is seek time which really only matters if you are running a database or serving numerous requests.
Click to expand...
Do you think that booting Windows is limited by sustained transfer rate, seek time, or CPU time?
 
Not CPU assuming you have a modern CPU not a pentium 133. Seek time maybe if your disk is horribly fragmented.

Judging by the results of the iRAM, which is the fastest "hard drive" vs the Raptor RAID 0. I'd say sustained transfer for a small portion of the entire boot process. However most of Windows boot time is waiting for initialization. Files are loaded from hard drivfe and then a whole lot of waiting. Sound card you there... yeah I'm here. Network you there...yeah I'm here. CDROM you have a disk inside. What is it? etc
 
Internal Transfer Rate (min) 28 Mbits/sec
Internal Transfer Rate (max) 427 Mbits/sec
Formatted Int Transfer Rate (min) 26.700000 Mbits/sec
Formatted Int Transfer Rate (max) 40.200000 Mbits/sec
External (I/O) Transfer Rate (max) 160 MBytes/sec
Avg Formatted Transfer Rate 35.5 MBytes/sec


You are right...pretty horrible. They must be 5-8 years old :p
 
Those are old Cheetahs, actually.
NOT a good deal. No warranty. Heavily used EMC pulls. Be lucky if you get a few months use out of them tops. They keep popping up everywhere. I keep a few for backplane testing, and I paid $29/ea shipped.
 
Actually they say they have a 1 year warranty. I'm thinking of getting a couple to replace my huge 10K cheetah 18.2GB U80 hard drives that go into my 10 drive scsi rackmount backplane. I'm sure they are quieter than the ones I have now and perform better.
 
i dont know much about scsi but i know all the computer techs at work and they usually give me stuff, If i get a couple controllers for free would this be a killer deal?
 
It is a good deal b/c you can choose free shipping option so think about picking up a 73GB raptor drive for $36. I would only say this is a good deal though if you have experience or someone to lean on for information when dealing with SCSI. A lot of this stuff isn't as plug and play as SATA and IDE. You have to have special cables that terminate, you need to know how to order and jumper each drive to be found by the controller, etc. It isn't "hard" but it isn't something you can do without know something about the work.

These drives are descent but no where near wicked fast and aren't the same level as the raptor drive but they are a heck of a lot cheaper and tied together with a good controller you would kill the raptor in multiple read/write situations which is why SCSI is soooo nice.
 
Anyone need an IBM ServeRAID II to go along with the drives? :p
I've got one in a PC Server 325, but switched to using the onboard Adaptec HA.
 
I picked up 4 :) So that makes a RAID 5 of ~200GB. Should be ample for some quick storage over gigabit network :)
 
Recieved the drives in one day and they are about 10x better packed than newegg does OEM. Each individually put into factory sealed static bags, then each wrapped with several layers of bubble wrap, then placed in a good sized box stuffed with stuffing peanuts.

I'm testing the possibly tonight and I'll let you all know how they do... I noticed they went back up in their inventory so who knows I might expand more but I doubt it b/c my 400GB SATA array is way fast :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top