Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 21:15:09 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@HiWAAY.net> To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Subject: choice of a new SCSI drive? Message-ID: <199906180215.VAA43581@nospam.hiwaay.net>
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Not much discussion here lately of what is going on in the SCSI market. Ordered a new MB today, an Asus P2B-S, with onboard Adaptec 7890 and 3860 after checking the archives confirming others have run same. MB was cheaper than an Adaptec 2940U2W PCI card by itself from most vendors. Only $200 more than the SCSI-less (but one PCI slot more) P2B-F. Is the 3860 an LVD "SCSI bridge" Adaptec uses to separate LVD and single ended, and run both on the same bus? Am downloading Asus' 11MB PDF manual at this moment so I might be answering my own question in a moment. A long moment at 28.8k. Would favor IBM or Seagate drives over anything else based on past performance. Actually less on performance performance and more on reliability performance. I don't want a 10k drive, partly for the noise. Partly for the heat. Would favor cool and quiet, as long as its reliable. Changed employers recently. Seems at my old job all my HD bookmarks listed LVD drives for less than non-LVD. That doesn't appear to be the case. Then after hearing it mentioned here and confirming it on IBM's site, it appears most LVD drives can fall back into single-ended mode? So maybe the market has wizened up learning they can use the latest LVD on the old controllers? A prime candidate HD for my new MB is at: http://www.onsale.com/category/inv/00037892/01605738.htm The is an "IBM ULTRASTAR 18ES 9.1GB HD U2SCSI 68-PIN 7200RPM LVD". For $350 (includes UPS ground shipping) it appears to be a good value. Among other nice things it has a 2MB cache. A nasty thing about Onsale/ AtCost is one can't get a straight answer as to the product's warranty, they link you to phone numbers where you can call the manufacturer and ask. IBM lists 5 years for over-the-counter drives. Seagate is well known for two warranty tiers, over-the-counter, and OEM. The OEM product is only warranted to the OEM. Its gotten so bad Seagate now has a serial number checker on their web site. A good thing about Onsale is I've dealt with them before and don't believe they would simply pocket my credit card number and jump across the border. A bad thing is all my credit cards have sent me those awful addendums stating they won't go to battle for me against the vendor if the purchase was made over 100 miles from my billing address. For my purposes, LVD is overkill. But I sorta feel like treating myself to something excessive at the moment. Ay pointers to sources of internal LVD cables and terminators? Some vendors advertise the drives prominently but forget about the essentials. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message
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