#Hard Drives, etc.
4 messages in this thread
I'm planning to add a large SCSI drive, probably 4GB. The vendor I've been
working with suggested a Seagate Hawk – #ST15230N, 512K cache, 5400 RPM. He
said that model would be more reliable than the Barracuda – #ST15150N, 1024K
cache, 7200 RPM because of the slower spindle speed. Does anybody know whether
this is the case? Does the Barracuda deliver better performance and is it
worth the extra $350?
Regarding a controller, several people have suggested an Adaptec A2940WKit
(32Bit PCI). Is Fast-Wide SCSI the way to go, or is there some other SCSI
flavor I should be looking at?
Are there other drives and/or controllers I should consider?
Finally, regarding SCSI backup, does anyone have any suggestions about brands,
models, etc? I haven't researched this yet.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Alan
>Regarding a controller, several people have suggested an Adaptec A2940WKit
(32Bit PCI). Is Fast-Wide SCSI the way to go, or is there some other SCSI
flavor I should be looking at?<
If you are going to use NT look for products that are on the Hardware
Compatibility List. I have an Adaptec 2940 and a 3940W and the both work great
under NT.
>Finally, regarding SCSI backup, does anyone have any suggestions about brands,
models, etc? I haven't researched this yet.<
I'm using an HP C1533a 4GB 4mm DAT. Super quick, supports compression
(8GB-16GB). If you plan to go to an Abekas you may want to look at the 8mm
Exabyte drives, they run about $2500 for the 8500 series. There are only
certain models of Exabyte that work with the Abekas.
Tim:
Thanks for your quick response.
Any general hard drive suggestions and/or specific info on the Seagate Hawk and
Barracuda (re the first paragraph of my first message): "I'm planning to add a
large SCSI drive, probably 4GB. The vendor I've been working with suggested a
Seagate Hawk – #ST15230N, 512K cache, 5400 RPM. He said that model would be
more reliable than the Barracuda – #ST15150N, 1024K cache, 7200 RPM because of
the slower spindle speed. Does anybody know whether this is the case? Does
the Barracuda deliver better performance and is it worth the extra $350?" ?
Alan
Alan,
Your salesman is a Dweeb and doesn't know what he's talking about. All of these
drives carry a long warranty. They don't quit like the old Winchester drives
did. I can't remember the last time a hard disk quit on me. Oh yeah, now I do.
Last January. A Seagate ST-225 quit. Poor thing. It was 12 years old.
Your salesman is just trying to move hardware. Drop him. Call Megahaus
(they're in the Computer Shopper). Good people and they work with the A/V
customers.
I have a 2 gig Barracuda and two Micropolis A/V drives, one 2 gig the other 4
gig. The Barracuda was yanked and put into general data processing because of a
known problem its has: Thermal Recalibration. Every so often, the drive has to
stop data transfer and recalibrate the heads because of drift due to heat and
hysteresis effect. It did stop data transfer on me once in a while like playing
AVI files. I got tired of it and put Micropolises in.
Micropolis has come up with a better solution and its drives minimize the
effect. While this is not important to most applications, its is important when
using the new PVR card or recording to CD-ROM. Both need a steady data stream
to operate correctly.
The Barracuda is a first generation Audio/Visual drive. The Hawk, I don't know
but it sounds like a general drive, not a A/V drive.
The Micropolis drives are the choice for most people including me for A/V work.
Drop me a note if I can help. Bye!
Mark.