Adaptec iSA1500 Storage Array

Advantages: A bargain. Easy to install and used. Good entry level SCSI controller.
Disadvantages: No support for higher data rates.

...of storage you can string together a bunch of old SCSI hard drives and end up with a reasonable amount of storage that isn’t too slow and will function reliably. So in summary SCSI moves data faster, you can connect a lot of devices, it is more reliable but it does cost a bit more. This brings me to Adaptec’s AVA two thousand nine hundred series. I personally am the proud owner of an AVA – 2904. Adaptec seem to increment the numbers (for example, I have seen a 2906 about) but I think this represents minor improvements to the series or cards intended for different markets. First, the good news this card is cheap. I bought mine for only £30, ideal as I am short of cash right now and I only wanted it to run an elderly SCSI cd writer at home. It also installed perfectly, I popped in the new card restarted my PC, it came back... Read review

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Advantages: online capacity expansion, deals with hard disc problems better
Disadvantages: slow compared to software RAID

...recommend upgrading to current firmware and 2.16 storcon utl (both are on www.intel.com. There is a linux version of the 2.16 storcon, but it was hard to find!) With initial installation on a Gigabyte GA7 motherboard and Adaptec 2940AU SCSI controller, the problems with onboard intel BIOS / adaptec 2940AU and mobo BIOS reared it's ugly head. I could not for the life of me with all the PCI juggling, IRQ remapping and BIOS remapping options get it to boot with a Adaptec SCSI card and Intel RAID card. I asked a friend about his setup, and he had no problems (he was running a Intel serverboard with his SRCS14L) My problem was solved by removing SCSI from system completely and migrating to IDE bootup drives (which was such a pain on linux!) Current drivers are 2.05 which are included since the 2.4.19 kernel. As with all RAID controllers... Read review

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Advantages: Pro: Slinky, power-packed server for cramped datacentres.
Disadvantages: Con: No 64-bit PCI slots, not enough PCI expansion slots.

...to hold five Ultra3 hard drives, a 133MHz bus and Intel's newest processors which run on a ServerWorks Entry ServerSet III LE chipset. It achieved satisfactory results in our benchmark tests. More drives should mean better performance. However, the PowerEdge's had a middling performance on our file server benchtest, a more hard-drive-dependent metric that measures a server's throughput in file read and write requests from clients. The server’s total throughput was 1.31 MB per second. Our web server benchmark test rated better with throughput at 1.78 MB per second. The server managed 122.5 transactions per second in the file server test and 118.8 transactions per second in the web server test. The PowerEdge 2450's slender chassis can support 90GB of total storage with five 18GB drives running at 10,000rpm. An integrated Adaptec AIC-7899... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful