"Poor" man's NAS

[Alma J Wetzker]

Michael Hipp wrote:
>>From: "Dominic Lepiane" <archangel at nibble.bz>
>>To: "Linux tips and tricks" <linux-users at linux-sxs.org>
>>Subject: "Poor" man's NAS
>>Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:14:58 -0700
>>
>>
>>Say a fellow wanted to get a multi-TB network file server running for under
>>10k, preferably close to 3k, what have folks here tried for large file
>>servers on mostly commodity hardware?
>>
>>I was looking at one of my local PC retailers and I think I can get:
>>
>>Promise 8 SATA channel RAID card (PCI-Express x4)
>>8x 320GB SATA drives
>>8x Promise SATA hot-swap drive bays
> 
> 
> Are SATA drives now considered to be "server quality". Conventional wisdom is that only SCSI is good enough for "real" production servers.
> 
> Opinions?
> 
> I need to build a server somewhat like you're spec'ing so the question isn't just academic. And the price of even one TB of SCSI makes me feel faint.

Opinion?  I got one of them things...

I really doubt that the media and heads are any different between SCSI 
and IDE (That really is the choice, even though both now have serial 
options and speeds have improved.)  Is the rest of the drive different? 
  I don't know.

The electronics, that I understand.  SCSI is still smart.  IDE is still 
rather stupid.  (IDE includes ATA and SATA)  IDE drives have all the 
useful stuff built into the controller.  The only do exactly what they 
are told, and only in that order.  SCSI, OTOH, takes all the commands, 
evaluates them and does them in the order that optimizes returning 
results based on what the drive mechanics need to do.  The performance 
difference is noticeable.

     -- Alma