I am about to order 4 servers online. Two with SCSI HDD and 2 with IDE HDD. I have a few questions regarding hdd choices. I hope someone can help me pick.

1. Whats the difference between 68pin and 80pin SCSI HDD? Which one should I pick?

2. Which SCSI HDD would pick ?

Fujitsu Man Series MAN3367MP, 36GB, 4.7ms, 10K rpm, 8M cache, Ultra160 80-pin SCSI drive.

IBM Ultrastar 73LZX IC35L036UC, 36.7GB, 4.9ms, 10K rpm, 4096K cache Ultra 160MB 80-pin SCSI hard drive.

Maxtor Atlas 10K-III KW036L4, 36.7GB, 4.5ms, 10K rpm 8192 K cache, Ultra-160Mb SCA 80-Pin 1" LP

3. Which brand would you choose for IDE HDD? IBM? Seagate? Maxtor??

>>1. Whats the difference between 68pin and 80pin SCSI HDD? Which one should I pick?

I believe 80 pin is the latest standard for U160 hard drives that spin at 10 and 15k RPM and it's most widely used.

As you can see from tech data, Fujitsu has 8MB cache, IBM has 4MB and actually Maxtor is hot-swap (size is a bit different) 8MB cache hard drive.

I have built over 10 rackmount systems and have been speaking with guys from big companies that sell custom built systems for over 1m in sales per year. Over 90% suggest the following:

For IDE drives, use IBM or Maxtor.
For SCSI (U160) use Seagate Cheetah or IBM hard drives.

You may also check out some hardware review sites that will give you the user feedback on specific hard drive models and real user experience. This may be helpful to you as well

If you can, go for Western Digital SCSI drives. Though a bit more expensive than Seagate or IBM, they sure are worth the extra bucks :)

80 pin is for hot swap and requires the backplane to support this. 68 pin is for non-hot-swap and has a separate power connector like normal IDE hard drives.

I would go with the Maxtor (formerly Quantum) Atlas 10K III.

Take a look at the StorageReview.com announcement about IBM saying their IDE drives were only recommended for 8 hours per day powered on... and then taking it back, sort of...

Whatever you do, stay away from IBM 75GXP and later drives (120GXP especially). They are extremely unreliable. I had two drives die on me after couple of months in a server. After that I switched to Fujitsu drives and had no problems at all.

I have 3 Maxtor DMA/EIDE drives in my media machine and I'm had no problems w/ them what so ever...

Great throughput even for video editing...

No failures

My first choice for IDE would be Maxtor with IBM/Segate second depending on models. For SCSI I'd go with Segate. IBM would be a second choice.

get the seagate 15k drives :)

Originally posted by ck
If you can, go for Western Digital SCSI drives. Though a bit more expensive than Seagate or IBM, they sure are worth the extra bucks :)
err, when did they started to become better ? .. last ones we tested still sucked :rolleyes:

I think one of the best way is to find out the drive compatibility listing first if there is one, especially if you plan to use RAID.

Western Digital is a very good drive, but relatively new in SCSI (only 3-4 years maybe), and I heard that WD its not widely compatible for some systems, although I use their 30 GB IDE RAID and they work great so far. Seagate and IBM are probably better (I never used quantum SCSI), and I have wonderful experience with Seagate SCSI drive (never had problems for years).