(Quick) SATA cables and drives Qs

[Risky]

About to order 4x Seagate 80Gb drives SATA NCQ - £36.28 +VAT at Ebuyer can anyone recommend any better options?

Also was goign to get some Belkin SATA Cables
http://images.belkin.com/F2N1169b18IN-CL/FUL1_F2N1169b18IN-CL.jpg
Right angle at the drive end, but if I have three in a drive cage am I going to be able to get them all in?

[fivecheebs]

Raid 5 or 0+1?

Well, i like my seagate 160s. Savastore have some hittachi 80s on offer (http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10277315) but thats the best of the offers i have seen. To be honest id probably stick with the seagates

[Risky]

Raid 5 or 0+1?

Well, i like my seagate 160s. Savastore have some hittachi 80s on offer (http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10277315) but thats the best of the offers i have seen. To be honest id probably stick with the seagates

Raid 5 :D

[fivecheebs]

hehe i should have know you wouldnt do it by halves :D I love raid 5

[Olly]

what controller are you using risky ?

I've thought about the possibility of using raid 5 a couple of times myself, but the controllers always seem outrageously expensive

Olly

[fillip]

Some of the DFI boards support RAID 5, I dunno if Risky is using a DFI board but I have a vague memory of him mentioning one a month or so ago as one of the best available http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/confused.gif
Maybe I dreamt it.

[Risky]

I've never had any DFI kit, I'm afraid (does seem good if a bit garish for me). The card is a Adaptec 2410SA (http://www.adaptec.co.uk/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?sess=no&language=English+UK&prodkey=AAR-2410SA_UK&cat=%2fTechnology%2fRAID%2fSerial+ATA+RAID) which has it's own harware XOR engine. Anyway I've ordered those Seagates now so I'll see how it does tomorrow.

I've never been keen on Raid 0 - it will give you good benchmarks but arguable not much real world benefit and a definite 100% icrease in the risk of data loss from drive failure. Raid 1 I use on my general internet/mail/office box as its a cheap option.

The Raid 5 card was about half price in Ebuyer's bargin area last year and I couldn't quite leave it on the shelf. You can get cheaper ones, but commonly they will be using your CPU for the work.

[Risky]

I don't believe it, the cables are the wrong right angle :rant:
http://www.veryrisky.co.uk/webimages/newbuild23.jpg
and fit a bit dodgy in one case
http://www.veryrisky.co.uk/webimages/newbuild26.jpg

Power wiring tidy though, eh?

[Leeum]

Nice cables there Risky :D Those the Akasa ones? Would look nice in my project, that's providing i use the Abit IDE - SATA convertor, anyone any experiences with those, it won't slow the drive down will it?

EDIT: Is that bare wire i see in the first picture, on the bottom connector :h34r:

[fivecheebs]

Gutted :( Thats a real bummer. I like the power cables tho mate ^_^

[Risky]

No bare wire, just a reflection. (I'll check again, though.

Anyway I used them on the Raid card instead:
http://www.veryrisky.co.uk/webimages/newbuild30.jpg

cables are going down ok, I've got so much hidden behind the tray, in fact there may be more wiring behind the tray than you get in some cases in total :h34r:

http://www.veryrisky.co.uk/webimages/newbuild32.jpg

[Risky]

All in (for now) http://www.wizdforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=15792#post15792 ;)

[Pug]

Wow! Those drives are getting cheap. :eek:

Nice cables... do they do 'em right angled at both ends yet? That'd be nice. ^_^

[cools]

Yup, they're obtainable. I'm not sure where from though, but I've seen them!

[Leeum]

Akasa do the straight to straight ones :)

[zer0]

with your sata power cables did you just move the plugs down the cable (and tape up the other spots?) i disected one of my power plugs and it is doable just wonering how you did it

[Risky]

with your sata power cables did you just move the plugs down the cable (and tape up the other spots?) i disected one of my power plugs and it is doable just wonering how you did it


The cable had two plugs, I just added another two on there. The PSU is an Antec Neopower which comes with a couple of spare SATA connectors, but you can buy them pretty readily

[Starbuck3733T]

Most SATA HDDs allow you to use a standard HDD molex too (at least the seagates and maxtor's i've used) if you just pop out the blocker. Don't use both power connections at the same time though, baaaaaad things will happen.

[zer0]

yeah my hitachi can use moltex connecters also but i use the sata power connecter because my powersupply has them. (not to mention ist on the side fo the drive you dont get to see.)

[Risky]

I'm not a great fan of the standard molex drive connector. I'm using SATA 15pin plugs for the four raid drives and the DVD Burner.

[Fibbles]

My recent Maxtor 300gb came with SATA power and data only, no molex. Being that the SATA cables are somewhat sleeker, I switched both drives to SATA power and I bought a 2 dollar blue UV sleeved and black Heatshrinked cable with 1 right angle connector (to the board) and 2 straight data cables for the drives. They were backwards to what I was expecting, so I had to change the wiring a bit and now there's a little mess above the drives. When I switch to my PC75 with newly cut metal top, I'll be using my Neopower too, and I won't need the SATA data cable I bought. There's one thing on that PSU I want to fix, and Crimson Sky's book gave me the 'power' to do it - I'm gonna shorten the motherboard power cable form long to 'just right'. I'll probably follow by re-sleeving and cutting all the other cables down to size.

I like the way your wiring looks, and boo on the DOA drive. I've never had a DOA, but I have had a dead after 2 days WD :(

[Risky]

Yeah, the sata connectors are a lot more 21st Century than the old molex drive connectors. I find the old ones a complete PIA and you be glad to see the back of them. The latching 6pin ones used for the Neopower are nice though. I meant to have a look last night, are they a variant on the PCI Express Power connector?

[Leeum]

Why the RAID5, those drives aren't giving up anyday soon, get yourself some RAID0 on the go :D

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

RAID 0 is useless unless your doing a lot of sustained writes such as video editing. For day to day use it can work out slower than a single drive plus it doubles the risk of failure. RAID 5 gives you the best of both worlds.

[Risky]

RAID 0 is useless unless your doing a lot of sustained writes such as video editing. For day to day use it can work out slower than a single drive plus it doubles the risk of failure. RAID 5 gives you the best of both worlds.

Ideal if you don't have any valuable data and only run benchmarks :wacko:

http://www.wizdforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=241&p=9210 link to good piece on storagereview

My little machine I runs Raid 1 as it has all my email'n'stuff. Disks arn't that pricy these days. From reviews I read that ruinning Raid 1 on the i865 (and later) chipsets gives the redundancy without much performance loss. Alas that machine is i815 so I'm on an add-in card.

[fivecheebs]

Yea leeum, go and read that piece on storage review but be aware its long. Well worth it though. The basics is that RAID0 = pants for most of us

[Risky]

I knew of Raid 0 once at work, It was a modelling app with a SQL backend. The application code was all on a Raid 5 array, but the data was on a huge Raid 0 using a stack of disks. Data security wasn't a issue as it was rebuilt from scratch for each run.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

Our video editing PC at work uses RAID 0 as it needs to do long fast sustained writes when capturing and re-encoding but its a real pain and has lost data a few times but its never anything critical.

[Leeum]

Any chance of a link to those SATA cables? Gonna get myself one for meh project :D

[Risky]

Any chance of a link to those SATA cables? Gonna get myself one for meh project :D
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?product_uid=57659

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatSectionView.process?IWAction=Load&Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201660

Prabbaly cheapest at wbuyer but as ever check around. And do note which way the right angles work - you will have a job with closely stacked drives.

[Leeum]

Thanks :D