Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:32:23 +0100 () | From | Hugo Van den Berg <> | Subject | Re: IDE Disk Problems |
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On Thu, 13 Feb 1997 bofh@snoopy.virtual.net.au wrote:
<snip>
> > I have read a number of messages related to the quality of IDE drives > and WD drives in particular and I believe that I have to respond to give > the other side of the story. > I have had what I consider to be a reasonable amount of sys-admin > experience (including running an ISP for over a year). Currently I run > 3 OS/2 servers, 5 Linux servers, 2 NT servers, and quite a few > workstations. All the OS/2 and Linux machines have IDE hard drives, > most of the hard drives are WD (about 10 WD drives in operation now, but > I've gone got rid of a few of the smaller ones - 340meg drives aren't > much use now). I have not had a single problem with a WD drive that > could be attributed to the drive (mis-use of `rm` doesn't count as a > drive problem). However with the NT systems running SCSI drives > (Seagate and Maxtor drives mainly with Adaptec, NCR, and DPT > controllers) I have had heaps of problems. Strange crashes on boot, > data loss in running system, systems booting up and suddenly crashing > when previously they had worked fine.
Now you're comparing NT with Linux. There is a stability differnce you know. I've had the same thing happen on NT with IDE drives, so the problem is IMHO NT, and not the disks.
> Based on the experiences with SCSI the client has now decided to save > money and buy IDE - the extra money they spent on SCSI wasn't getting > them any extra performance or reliability. > > As for performance, I recall seeing a message from Mark Lord saying > that in most Linux systems you won't gain anything from SCSI. Save the > $300 on a SCSI controller and get 64meg of RAM - it'll make your system > faster and more reliable than SCSI.
That depends. If it's a multiuser system things like tagged command queueing will give you much better concurrency on a SCSI disk. SCSI also gives a lower bus load, leaving more CPU time available for processes. I have a 3 year old IBM spitfire on an Adaptec 2940, with a 486 CPU acting as a fileserver that outperforms most pentiums with IDE drives, especialy when users access it concurrently.
On the other hand if you have a single user desktop machine the extra money is probably wasted.
> > Russell Coker >
-------------------------------------- Hugo Van den Berg - hbe@cypres.nl Phone - +31 (0)30 - 60 25 400 Fax - +31 (0)30 - 60 50 799 --------------------------------------
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