Basically, I picked up a SCSI controller off eBay so I could get some data off an old drive, the controller is an Adaptec 2100s, I got it for $15

Looking at the card, it has 256megs of cache, onboard xor offloading etc...would it be worth it to pick up a few SCSI drives to boot off of? I do a lot of multitasking, and I usually have several virtual machines open, so I'm waiting on the disks a lot it seems. My current boot drives are two 80gb WD drives in RAID-0, but my SATA controller sucks, and I get like 83MB/s tops and like 17ms access times Basically what I'm asking is, would I benefit from SCSI(I know it's old technology, that doesn't really matter) I see the drives on eBay going for practically nothing, so cost isn't really a deciding factor. Also, what disk configuration would be recommended? I was thinking a single 15k drive would do it, but for the price they're at I could get more, but I don't want extra heat/noise if it's not worth it.

I had this card in my machine before with 3x 10k drives in RAID-0 , and it was MUCH more responsive, which is what got me thinking about going SCSI again, because I'm just not impressed with SATA. Any thoughts on this topic?

The (old) PCI interface is going to cap your transfer speed.

If you're running VMs and other multitasking apps, it could be beneficial. I wouldn't run RAID-5 on that Adaptec, but RAID-0 on 2x 15K SCSI drives would help out your VMs a lot.

If I remember right that controller is a Ultra 160, which means it delivers 160 mb/s, and it seems that a RAID 0 array would add some flexibility to your system. I would say...go for it.

Thanks for the replies. Looking back at the previous SCSI setup I had, I'm definitely gonna go with SCSI again.

I think I'll go with 2x 15k drives as SomeJoe7777 suggested.

$15!!! OMG! Do you know how much at 256Meg Cache controller cost back in the day when it was new!!!

I would definitely give it a whirl.

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