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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC )

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To: Kaspre who wrote (4743)	1/8/1999 2:39:00 AM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) of 14778

As for the second hard drive ... you are thinking mirrored drives? As in, buy the RAID PCI Add-in to allow automatic real-time backup to a second drive? I have not considered mirrored drives for any of my systems. They are probably best for mission critical continuous operation server environments. I have considered RAID 0 setups. I work with very large files 50MB + and save times can get very long. If I could stripe to 4 drives simultaneously the save times could be reduced aprox 4X. With a fast processor and a lot of RAM I do not think harddrives affect performance very much. A 7200 RPM drive is good enough for standard applications. I believe you need two harddrives for two reasons. 1) I do not trust harddrives. I find harddrives are the most likely hardware component to fail. 2) I do not trust software. IMO software crashes are the most common type of system failure. A second harddrive can address both of these issues. It can play a significant role in recovery system. Do a text search in this thread for KOT. Also, it appears that only the Xeon version gets U2W SCSI, the GX slot 1 board stays regular UW SCSI. You will probably not approach the bus limitations of U2W (80 MB/sec?). I doubt you would be bottlenecked with UW (40 MB/sec?) Is it dual channel? My priority for SCSI is for plug in options. I does not take long to fill seven SCSI id's when you start adding harddrives and CDROMs. Dual channel gives more options for the 1-7 IDs. Most of my SCSI devices do not have an option for IDs above 8. I'm thinking 128MB ECC PC-100 from Corsair at this point ... possibly 256MB to make it a longer-term investment. (and this is supposed to be a "Dream Machine PC" after all!) Watch out for the longer-term investment idea. It does not work IMO. Monitors, cases, CDROMs, floppies and harddrives have some lasting value. CPUs, RAM, motherboards are not the place to put your money. Go for 128 MB RAM unless you need 256. I doubt you will ever need more than 512 MB RAM in this generation of computer. What happens to a RAM investment two years from now when the new chipsets are using the next generation of RAM? It turns out todays Dream Machine is a 450 MHz CPU for less than $100 in a $100 mobo with 128 MB RAM. Get it while the gettin's good and wait to see what surprises come our way next year. would '98 support a RAID array like that? Mylex makes a hardware RAID controller that has support for many OSes including NT and Win95 (I will guess Win98..I have not checked recently) although the USB offers greater portability with other newer pc's.. It is still a bit early for USB IMO. To save the IRQs you need to opt for USB keyboard and mouse. Getting USB for one device is not worth it. I have had to disable USB in many of my new machines for compatibility reasons. zip for inexpensive compatibility or CDR unless your 'computer buddies' have zip drives. although I'd probably go to tape for backup Tape is the way to go for an automated backup solution Zeuspaul

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