[PLUG] SCSI verses SATA RAID

[Jason R. Martin]

On 3/31/06, Steve Bonds <1s7k8uhcd001 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Roderick A. Anderson raanders-at-acm.org wrote:
>
> > What are your thoughts on SCSI verses SATA RAID?
>
> I'm a SCSI bigot from way back, but the price point on SATA is just
> too compelling these days.  A while back SATA crossed the "costs half
> as much for the same capacity" mark, which is important since it means
> you can now own a mirrored pair of SATA drives for about the same
> price as a single SCSI drive.
>
> A quick Pricewatch search on 5-year warranty drives (Seagate) at 300GB
> shows this today:
>
> SCSI: $500
> SATA: $120
>
> Based on this approximation, I could own *four* SATA drives for the
> price of a single SCSI drive, under the same warranty.  The SCSI drive
> is 10,000RPM, and the SATA 7200RPM, but with four drives I can now run
> a striped/mirror arrangement ("RAID-10") and those two pairs of
> 7200RPM drives will outperform the 10,000RPM drive due to the RAID
> involved.
>
> I frequently hear RAID rebuild time as a reason the individual drives
> need to be more reliable.  The probability of having a second drive
> fail during the 2-3 hours (at most) it might take to rebuild onto a
> hot spare (hey, you can afford one now!) is very low.  Far lower than
> the probability of a second SCSI drive failure during the 3-5 days it
> will take to order a new drive, since you couldn't afford a hot spare.
>
> As painful as it is for a "quality-conscious" person such as myself to
> think about, once RAID comes into play, the "I" (inexpensive) is the
> important part.  Unless the failure rate is truly ridiculous (and the
> warranty prevents that) the cheaper, the better.

Aren't a lot of the cheaper/low-end SATA "RAID" controllers actually
software raid and/or RAID 0 and 1 only?

Jason