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About Noel

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  1. I'm new at this! What can expect in terms of service life in a fast SSD solution for desktop applications? The apps I use will not involve a lot of write operations per se... Thanks in advance, Noel
  2. Thanks for that Oliver. Really? From a partition on a drive? Cool! Now, here's a biggie: I can see with my ASUS board (P5E) that you can select the boot drive. So, is there ANY interaction or interdependencies when you have two completely separate drives and you select one or the other to boot from? This might be the safest solution: just boot either drive. But my question is, if I install Vista now, after disconnecting my XP drive during the Vista install, and I boot to EITHER drive, will the OS that boots know there is another version of Windows on the machine? If so, then this will have issues. What do you know?
  3. Please forgive my ignorance! I don't know what the difference is between a clone and an image. I can tell you exactly what I'd like to have accomplished, then perhaps you can point me the right way . . . Here's the scenario. I actually have 3 drives: 2 250Gb SATAs, and 1 500Gb SATA. I have a nice complete installation of XP of all the basic programs I use, ready to rock n roll, on the 250Gb drive #1. The other two drives are currently empty. Eventually, I want to install Vista 64 on the 2nd 250Gb drive. I've read up on some issues with dual booting these two OS's, so hopefully I will get that going ok. What I have no idea about is how I can use the 500GB drive to make a clone of EACH of my two 250 drives, and have either or both of those copies be bootable, so that in the event of a crash of drive 1, I can just set the 500gb drive as the boot drive and start up from there. Is this doable, or is it too complicated or problem prone? It seems like it could be either impossible (can you have the 2nd partition on the 500gb drive boot, and the first partition too?) or problematic. Anyway, I really appreciate the guidance from people who understand the issues.
  4. Howdy, I have a situation I don't know how to deal with. I would like to clone my C: drive to a new SATA drive, and I would like to reformat my current C: drive and use it for a data drive in the same box as the cloned drive will live in. I plan on using Acronis (Seagate's DiskWizard). I understand if you try to boot to XP Pro with TWO identical drives set up as boot drives bad things can happen. So, how the heck can I reformat my original drive? Thanks in advance for your expertise. Noel
  5. Really, how? Saw no options to disable the drive in device manager, but did select "Uninstall". When I rebooted, the drive was still there. I would have thought the LSI BIOS would have given an option to disable the drive, but I'm not seeing it.
  6. I need to be able to hide or disable a scsi drive, while keeping other scsi drives visible/mounted, in Windows 2K or XP. Any ideas? I use an LSI single channel controller, and there is no problem disabling scanning for a particular device so that is does not show up in the scsi device list in the BIOS, but when Windows starts, there it is. I can always physically disconnect the particular drive, but that's not too elegant! Thx, Noel
  7. Hello People, I would SUPER appreciate any wisdom here as I know VERY LITTLE about SCSI, and about the same about RAID! I only barely could figure out how to set the jumpers on my 4 SCSIs (had to move one for some reason I didn't understand well to get the 4th drive to be recognized, but it works fine so no apparent worries. I am at a crossroads, and need to decide which path to pursue. I am assembling a higher end intel q core box, and WAS planning to use my 4 aging 15K.x drives that I have currently in a 5y/o box. I will take the guts of my old box and put them into a new case for the lil woman. It seems to me the sort of transfer rates HDTach or Tune show for my non-raid set up seems by today's standards, pretty puney: ~ 82mb/sec transfer rate on the newer 15K.5 drive, which is a 73Gb model. That seems ok, but nowhere near what I'm seeing with RAID setups looking at benchmarks. It would come into play when loading large amounts of data associated with starting up Flight Simulator laden with lotsa add ons, or refreshing new levels in FPS. Other than that, probably not much argument for changing anything. I bought these drives because I wanted to optimize Gigastudio, which likes fast access times and multiple drives. Otherwise, I am a typical home user with some gaming (FS series and the odd FPS), and do some digital audio recording, and that's about it. I'm thinking these are my options for better transfer rates and adequate access time: 1. Keep it all the same and leave it at that. I have an older ATA drive to go with my mobo/cpu/ram to the lil woman's PC, so we're covered there. 2. Buy a SCSI Raid controller . . . BUT! This is where I don't have a clue: Do I need TWO drives of the same type to do RAID 0? I don't have that going for me now, so I'd have to pick up another 73GB Cheetah, and use the remaining 18/36/36 drives for data. ONE of the 36's is a 10K Cheetah, the others are 15Ks. 3. Finally, make a break from SCSI, in favor of a good pair of SATA 10K drives, and do THAT in RAID config with the P5E mainboard's SATA RAID capability, keeping the one 73Gb 15K scsi to put the data files of Gigastudio on, or send it along to the wife's PC and depart from SCSI forever and get a 3rd SATA for a separate DATA drive (again, Giga likes this,l or did 5y ago when systems were slower). It would be a very slow boot situation having SCSI and SATA RAID I'm guessing with that config, which in itself could be an argument for abandoning SCSI completely. Last but not least in any way, I really don't like fixing computers! So, not going to fool with Vista quite yet, and if mobo-based SATA RAID is AT ALL a problem-prone issue with current X38 boards from ASUS I'm not for it. MANY thanks in advance for sharing your experience and wisdom! Noel
  8. Noel

    SCSI and Termination: help!

    Thanks for those answers. A question I have also is that when I run HDTach it's showing average read times of 90mb/sec. Is this because my LSI controller is sitting in a 32-bit regular PCI slot? Would a new card that goes into a PCIe slot and says U320 single channel get quite a bit more average read rate? Thanks again P
  9. It's hard to fathom, but I have been using 3 SCSI drives for 4 years in my desktop and really don't have a clue what I'm doing! I added a 4th drive and I am almost ashamed to say used the trial and error method to set up jumpers so the 4th drive would be recognized (!!). I have been operating under the belief that I did not need to consider this "termination" issue and I find a few articles I've read to really not improve my understanding of the issues with this. Can someone put me in touch with an "idiot's guide to SCSI" in web article form? Or just explain what I need to know in simple terms? Here is ALL I have in my SCSI system, ie I have no other SCSI devices: 4 U320 Seagates (3 are 15K, 1 is 10K, not that this matters I believe!) 1 LSI1010 U160 controller in a regular PCI slot Here are my questions, and if you can answer them then I may remain blissfully ignorant of all the other SCSI concerns, as I have done so far! I guess I can contact SEAGATE, whose tech support may be able to reduce my questions down to short and effective answers. 1. Is there any need to specify which device is "terminated", or is this automatic or P&P? 2. What do I need to know about "parity"? 3. If I picked up a U320 controller that plugs into a standard PCI slot, will I gain anything in transfer rates over my current card? Obviously if my system is working, something must be set up correctly. What has made me post this distress call is that when I put on the 4th drive a few weeks ago, simply specifying a SCSI ID did not lead to the controller's BIOS picking up the drive, in fact it was an either or situation: with the new drive added, two others DISAPPEARED! I ended up dinking around with some jumpers and I really wasn't certain exactly what I was doing. Anyway, I'm guessing that a few pearls about these issues could reduce down the critical knowledge deficits enough where I could be confident I . . .knew what I was doing enough to set up THIS system. Seriously, any help would be appreciated, especially short and concise help. As you can tell, I'm trying to avoid becoming an expert in all matters SCSI, and really don't wish to go into SCSI vs SATA or any other tangential concerns. I'm guessing a few simple pearls like this will be all that I need: 1. Set an ID using jumper for each device, 2. Set the jumper to TERMINATE on one of the devices, and leave the others to not terminate. Is this it? Many thanks in advance, Noel
  10. Hello, Quick background: I have 3 Cheetah Ultra320 drives connected to an lsi 53c1010 adaptor. I recently purchased and tried to install a 4th Cheetah U320 drive to the remaining free 68 pin connector on my U320 capable SCSI cable. When I add the 4th drive, the LSI config utility does not find the drive, or list it in any case. If I disconnect the other 3 drives and just connect the new 4th drive, the controller picks it up. It seems to have something to do with parity checking as when I change the default parity checking from YES to NO in the LSI driver it picks up the new drive. I have not had to do anything with this switch with any of my other 3 Seagate Cheetah drives. Any ideas where to look? Do I have a defective drive? The cable has a terminator. Help! Noel
  11. Noel

    SCSI vs SATA?

    Wow, great information. One last piece: what kind of durability can I expect (sounds like the wrong word in this case!) from these enterprise SCSIs I have right now? Could they go another 3 or 4 years? Again, SMART gives them 100% now, at about 4 years and 5 months daily use. I plan on sending the guts from this machine to my beloved spouse, but was going to keep the drives as again they seem to be fine. I imagine all of a sudden one will fail, but who knows when that comes. I do keep them at a steady ~24 degrees C or so all the time... Spod thanks for that info but the 15K drives are actually plenty fast for seek times for this application--ie, it wont' improve Giga but going with the SSD technology. I feel like I'm kinda stuck with these SCSIs despite the fact a 10K SATA would probably be fine for Giga in a new faster machine. Decisions decisions! Thanks again for the info. N
  12. Noel

    SCSI vs SATA?

    Thank you for your insights. You know I don't leave my PC on 24/7, mainly to conserve energy. And I understand HDD's may last longer if you just leave them on 24/7. Another hope I have is to chose the system that is least likey to tax CPU cycles during file read activity as I also enjoy MS Flight Sim, which is super CPU hungry and so can be negatively impacted by any peripheral that is borrowing CPU cycles. What do you know this regard, for SCSI vs SATA? I am also thinking about my next system and whether or not I should stick with SCSI in an entirely new PC, but used for the same stuff. Do SATA systems boot up faster? I notice SCSI slows down boot time a bunch on my old Win2K Pro machine.
  13. Noel

    SCSI vs SATA?

    The controller is a low end LSI53C1010 PCI to Dual-Channel Ultra160 SCSI Controller, and the mainboard is an ASUS P4G8X Deluxe with a SATA controller built in. I don't suppose I would get anything meaningful out of a better controller for desktop use would I? I mainly am using these fast spin drives for GigaStudio which can benefit from fast seek times. I am not usually moving huge amounts of data except when copying or moving large files etc.
  14. Noel

    SCSI vs SATA?

    Hi, I have had 3 Seagate 15K.3 drives for over 4 years now in a desktop environment. I chose these drives because I wanted the fastest seek time and also reliable drives. They were the 5y warrantied versions. When I run S.M.A.R.T. on them they all show 100% performance & fitness. I have no idea when they will fail of course, but I am struck by the fact they test well. I have installed new IDE and a few SATA and run SMART and have found brand new ones with deficits, some quite signficant. In any case, I may be off base on this in terms of reliability and durability, but somehow it makes me thing I have invested in more reliable/durable drives in going this route. I"d like to pick up a 4th drive, mainly to back up the other 3 and have extra room for more data or programs. The question I have here is: should I stick with SCSI (I see even the 5y warrantied ones have come down alot in price from when I made my first purchase of these) or go with SATA. Are there 5y warrantied SATA? 15K spin rates yet? How many SATAs can I put on my ASUS board . . . ie, do they daisy chain like SCSIs? Thanks for your insights, Noel