Mixing SCSI and IDE, is it a pain or painless?

I picked up two 50 GB ultra 2's for next to nothing as part of some

other stuff I bought on eBay. I can also get my hands on a adaptec

ultra 2 card for free. Does it make sense to try to integrate these

into my system or should I sell them for what I can and get an IDE

drive. I like the idea of having 3 drives, one for programs, one

for data, and one to backup important files and to use as a scratch

disk. Also, what are the power requirments of these drives? Don't

want to overload my power supply (Allied 200 watt).

 

thanks as always,

There's no problem in running them. If they're reasonably fast they'd make a good scratch disks (although its better to not need scratch disks). You could RAID them (mirror) or something, but if you want to use one for storage and one for something else that may not work out too well.

 

If they're fairly high speed drives they may put a strain on your power supply. Two drives and a card will eat up a fair amount of power (not over 50 or 60 watts once running probably) but the startup draw they will probably demand may tax your power supply the most. It would depend on what your other components are and how high end of a system this is. I have a fairly high end system and when its running full speed ahead it just barely breaks 200watt draw on my power supply (Antec 430w). People tend to enjoy overestimating the amount of power computers actually need, PSU makers love this.

 

That said, I would prefer to play it safe so if power consumption is an issue (and it may be) you might want a new power supply. Or you could sell those things and probably make some good money and buy a big IDE drive.

I mix SCSI and IDE all the time on servers. Multiple controllers really increase transaction efficiency and speed.

 

I install the operating system and program files on the SCSI array and data on the IDE array. This takes advantage of the quicker seek and burst rate of SCSI vs the higher sustained read rates of big IDE drives.

 

That power supply is going to be taxed when running multiple SCSI drives off it.

If power consumption is a concern you could put the drives in external cases (with independant power supplies). Though you may be better off just selling them, and buying a massive 7200rpm ide drive, they are staggeringly cheap now.

I don't know a single person who has got SCSI working without sacrificing a young goat first. All the experience I have had with it is bad, and all the people I know who have tried using it have had bad experiences. Sure people use it in servers, but they just phone up Dell (who do the goat sacrifice bit) when it breaks.

 

Remember too that HDD's on ebay have unknown history and may have been dropped or knocked around. 100GB of IDE drive is cheap, but your data and time are not.

<i>SCSI=bad; Disk from ebay=bad; Your data=precious</i>

<br><br>

I agree with the second two for the most part. Don't agree that SCSI is bad, but for most people very unnecessary. However if its free or nearly cheap when why not. :)

Partition one of the SCSI drives into two and use it for two copies of Windows and for your programs. Don't put two SCSI discs into your system unless you have a big power supply and don't mind the noise.

 

Buy a big new IDE drive for your data.

 

You get faster response times from the SCSI system disk, and a new cheap large disk for your data.

 

Sorry, just seen your power supply - 200watt will only really be enough for one IDE drive. 300 watt is OK for a SCSI and IDE mix, probably need 400 watt for multiple SCSI drives.

 

It's still worth having a mixed SCSI/IDE setup if you can.

Here we have an OLD IBM server; that has been used just for uploading; and backup/storage. It has <b>three</b> IDE drives; plus a ide CD-Rw/dvd; a 5 1/2 floppy; and a 3.5 floppy; plus a 333Mhz PII Cpu; and 512megs ram; NIC card; video card; sound card; modem; all running on a <b>200 Watt</b> Power supply; built in 1996...Not all power supplies are equal; some are junk; some are robust. You can sequence the startup of the ide HDA's; in this old box; to reduce the max current draw; when starting up the box. <BR><BR>Most all SCSI problems with computer help lines are due to lack of terminators; not setting the SCSI device switch on scanners. A friend that does this says this is AT LEAST 95 % of the SCSI calls they get. This is with a zillion paper tags; stickers; etc; on their handware.<BR><BR>SCSI is an old interface; used alot with servers; and some scanners. <BR><BR>The many SCSI cards I have used have been no problems. Be aware there are many SCSI variants. <BR><BR> The largest current draw on an HDA is during startup; many systems allow one to stagger the startup; to avoid Power supply problems. The second peak draw is during large random seeks.<BR><BR>Disc drives vary alot in there current draw. The newer 7200RPM IDE drives actually draw more than many older 5400rpm drives. <BR><BR>In doing some testing with PCI IDE raid contollers; I have had 6 IDE drives running on one dual pentium pro box; with the similar 200W power supply. Four of these are NEW 80Gig 7200rpm Maxtors; the other two are old drives on the motherboards IDE cable.<BR><BR>A friend across the country had his rather new wazoo no name 400watt PCX power supply crap out; and it fried ALL OF THE HDA'S ON HIS COMPUTER. Here the Raid concept failed; as the massive power supplies's failure ruined ALL HIS DATA...; spread across a IDE raid system; on a rather new P4.....<BR><BR>Here I place valuable data on two different computers.

Phil, you are trolling here. SCSI is pretty easy to figure out. It also is still very fast, even

compared to SATA or Firewire. More importantly you can manage your drives to some

degree with the SCSI protocol - a useful and under-utilized technique.

 

If you can get a free SCSI card too, why not?

I use SCSI all the time in my desktops and servers. My home server has a bunch of SCSI drives that I got cheap. I also have a second IDE controller in a PCI slot as well. Runs just fine.

 

The single bigest problem using SCSI on a PC is IRQ and HD controller address. Once solved (and keeping the SCSI IDs different) no different than IDE drives. I use Windows 2000.

 

I also use them on my Macs - much easier!

As others have said, it will work, but if you're insisting on SCSI you'd better get a goat off Ebay, and while you're at it bid on a new power supply.

 

I have a hard disk from Ebay which works fine and I'd be grateful if you could all stop worrying me about whether it will continue to do so. I have a nervous enough disposition as it is.