Digital BW, The Print

I'm about to build a new PC for working on large images (500 MB) in
Photoshop, and trying to decide between SCSI or IDE disks. I know this
is fairly off-topic, but I respect the members of this group, and many
of the images will be B&W, so be nice.

The IDE setup could be a Western Digital 100G 7,200rpm (with 8MB buffer)
as the system disk, plus a RAID-0 array of two 40G 7,200rpm drives for
the scratch disk. Or, for about $400 net cost increase, I could use
smaller but faster SCSI disks: a 73G 10,000rpm system disk and an 18G
15,000rpm scratch disk. 

I think the biggest advantage of the SCSI disks would be faster access
times, but I don't know how much faster the SCSI machine would really be
in practice, because I don't know what size data blocks Photoshop reads
and writes to its scratch disk. Can anyone help?

Either way, I'm thinking of an Athlon XP 2000+ CPU and either 1.5 or 3 G
of DDR memory. Thanks for any advice, or pointers to good info (I have
searched).

Richard Wolfson
rwolfson at LyricDesign.com

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Richard Wolfson" 
<rwolfson@L...> wrote:
> I'm about to build a new PC for working on large images (500 
MB) in
> Photoshop,

I'm on a Mac, so things will be different for you, but I've heard 
about some issues with some of the IBM IDE drives, especially 
the 75gig model. I think there might even have been a 
class-action suit related to them. The warranty on IDE drives is 
shorter, I've heard, but I don't know about all of them. 

If you go SCSI, I'd go for fastest SCSI, maybe the SCSI 160. If 
you're gonna mess with all the SCSi witchcraft, you might as well 
get the speed boost. But the money is much more for SCSI, but 
I'm sure you know that.

For the record, I have that IBM75 as my second drive, and it's 
working fine. But I've got my eye on it.

> For the record, I have that IBM75 as my second drive, and it's
> working fine. But I've got my eye on it.

Mark,

I have two IBM 60gig 7200rpm Deskstars in my box and something about them is
infuriating, I'm wondering if you experience this too. They seem to go to
sleep all too frequently, with my system stalling as they wake up. If they
both woke up at the same time it might not be so bad, but as it is they're
they're staggered and it gets annoying.

So, do you find yours snoozing a lot? I wish there were some way to adjust
it's frequency. Let me know if you know anything this....

Todd

hi Mark -
 
Thanks for taking the time to answer. 
 
Yes, the SCSI drives I'm considering are the Ultra 160, and the Adaptec
drive that works with them. The 15,000 rpm scratch disk is as fast a
drive as you can buy.
 
I didn't know there was a problem with IBM drives, but I'll watch out
for that. If I go IDE, I'll probably use Western Digital.
 
cheers,
Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: marktuckerdotcom [mailto:mark@...] 
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 11:33 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: SCSI or IDE for new Photoshop machine (OT)


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Richard Wolfson" 
<rwolfson@L...> wrote:
> I'm about to build a new PC for working on large images (500 
MB) in
> Photoshop,

I'm on a Mac, so things will be different for you, but I've heard 
about some issues with some of the IBM IDE drives, especially 
the 75gig model. I think there might even have been a 
class-action suit related to them. The warranty on IDE drives is 
shorter, I've heard, but I don't know about all of them. 

If you go SCSI, I'd go for fastest SCSI, maybe the SCSI 160. If 
you're gonna mess with all the SCSi witchcraft, you might as well 
get the speed boost. But the money is much more for SCSI, but 
I'm sure you know that.

For the record, I have that IBM75 as my second drive, and it's 
working fine. But I've got my eye on it.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Todd wrote:

> I have two IBM 60gig 7200rpm Deskstars in my box and ...
> They seem to go to sleep all too 
> frequently, 

Todd, have you checked BOTH your Windows power setup and your BIOS setup
pages for snoozing controls? Sometimes they fight. I think it works best
to disable BIOS power management, and let the OS control it.

hth,
Richard

on 1/21/02 12:04 PM, Richard Wolfson wrote:

> Todd wrote:
> 
>> I have two IBM 60gig 7200rpm Deskstars in my box and ...
>> They seem to go to sleep all too
>> frequently, 
> 
> Todd, have you checked BOTH your Windows power setup and your BIOS setup
> pages for snoozing controls? Sometimes they fight. I think it works best
> to disable BIOS power management, and let the OS control it.

Thanks Richard, 

I forgot to mention I'm on a Mac. My system sleep is set for 1 hour, but
these guys are on their own schedule... Does anybody know how to access the
BIOS power management with Mac OS 9.1?

Todd

> I have two IBM 60gig 7200rpm Deskstars in my box and something about them
is
> infuriating, I'm wondering if you experience this too. They seem to go to
> sleep all too frequently, with my system stalling as they wake up. If they
> both woke up at the same time it might not be so bad, but as it is they're
> they're staggered and it gets annoying.
>
> So, do you find yours snoozing a lot? I wish there were some way to adjust
> it's frequency. Let me know if you know anything this....

Power management is adjusted in both the BIOS and the operating system.
You're running a flavour of Windows? If so, disable hard disk power down in
both the BIOS and Windows power management.

If you have your hard disks set to power management, there will always be a
wake-up period and spin-up time will vary from drive to drive.

Mark mentioned: 
> I think there might even have been a
> class-action suit related to them.


The IBM class action suit is only for certain laptop drives. Their desktop
drives are solid. IBMs are the only drives I'll recommend to my clients.
Avoid Western Digital as they have a high rate of failure.

Best,

John V.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., John Vitollo 
<jvlist@h...> wrote:
> The IBM class action suit is only for certain laptop drives. Their 
desktop
> drives are solid. 


Here is the link for the class action suit for the 75gig IBM 
Deskstar drives:

http://www.sheller.com/ibmclassaction.htm

-Mark Tucker

> Here is the link for the class action suit for the 75gig IBM 
> Deskstar drives:
> 
> http://www.sheller.com/ibmclassaction.htm
> 
> -Mark Tucker

Then this is a second suit against IBM...I guess. Geez...installed 
about ten this past year with users running ten to eighteen hours 
a day...never had a problem. Has Western Digital ever been 
sued for their drives? Lawyers have to make a living too...I  
guess!

Best,

John V.

SCSI is faster...have you thought about the G4 dual processor? It comes with
the ATA drive, but easy enough to add SCSI drives for scratch discs. I'm on
the G3450 MHz with dual SCSI drives. I am about to add the dual 800...

good luck!
t

The latest I've heard about a class action lawsuit against IBM for their
hard drives does, in fact, involve their deskstar hard drives--specifically,
the 75GXP. My best recollection is that it was a problem with the fragility
of their glass platters, but I couldn't swear to that. Here's an article:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,67608,00.asp

If you google on [ibm deskstar class action], you'll come up with loads of
links on the subject.

Nevertheless, I am, for no good reason, a moderately consistent buyer of IBM
drives. I guess I started buying them because they, at one point, were the
leaders in data density. I've had one go bad (a 10K RPM SCSI drive), and
getting the warranty replacement was trivially easy, and remarkably speedy.
The present generation of 7.2K RPM drives, the 60GXP, is not, to my
knowledge, subject to the reliability problems that are reputed to plague
the 75GXP. The 60GXP also has a higher data density (20 GB/platter, rather
than 15GB/platter) and so should be faster, and probably generate less heat
(fewer moving objects).

For what it's worth, I own a 60GB 60GXP and am about to order another to use
in a striped configuration. If I were starting from scratch, I'd probably
simply buy the least expensive 20 GB/platter, 7200 RPM, ATA 100 drive I
could find. I'm generally skeptical of the idea that, in computer
components, you can reliably correlate brand name & reliability.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: John Vitollo [mailto:jvlist@...]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 11:03 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: SCSI or IDE for new Photoshop machine (OT)


Mark mentioned:
> I think there might even have been a
> class-action suit related to them.


The IBM class action suit is only for certain laptop drives. Their desktop
drives are solid. IBMs are the only drives I'll recommend to my clients.
Avoid Western Digital as they have a high rate of failure.

Best,

John V.



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This Mac folk swears by Seagate!

"Sam A. McCandless" wrote:

>  I thought Maxtor drives were at least as well regarded as IBM drives,
>
> at least among Mac folk? I hope JV will let us know what the mix of
> his clients is and whether he thinks that's relevant.
>
> Sam
>
>
> >Yes, this is what I have always heard and was surprised to hear
> otherwise on
> >the list in the last few postings.  I'm looking into an IBM Deskstar
> myself,
> >because of their reputation for reliability.
> >
> >Helene
> >
> >
> > > Their desktop
> > > drives are solid. IBMs are the only drives I'll recommend to my
> clients.
> > > Avoid Western Digital as they have a high rate of failure.
>
>
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls
> and other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint
>
> Please follow these basic guidelines:
> - Include your full name with your message.
> - Include the address of your website, if you have one.
> - As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier messages to
> keep them short.
> - As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject
> header.
> - Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or
> "flames."
> - Complete your Yahoo profile.
> - Before posting a question, search the message archives and the
> various resources on the homepage.
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 1/21/02 11:43:27 PM, rwolfson@... writes:

<< Then I spent all $ saved by not buying SCSI, plus more, on memory: a
total of 3 GB of DDR (double data rate) RAM. I can't be sure if this is
optimum, but I suspect it won't suck.

Richard Wolfson >>

Hi Richard:

Are you planning to run NASA with all this?

-Andy Darlow

Photography, Digital Print Consulting and Custom Editions
Andrew Darlow Images International
www.andydarlow.com
andy@...

This is what I've always done, buying the best value drive for the budget 
that I was willing to pay at the time.

I have a mixture of Fujitsu, Western Digital, Maxstor and IBM drives and have 
never had trouble with any of them!

On Monday 21 Jan 2002 9:09 pm, cf-lists@... wrote:
>  If I were starting from scratch, I'd
> probably simply buy the least expensive 20 GB/platter, 7200 RPM, ATA 100
> drive I could find. I'm generally skeptical of the idea that, in computer
> components, you can reliably correlate brand name & reliability.
>
> Chris

Regarding the 60GXP;

I'm using an IBM 60G  AV drive - the same drive (Vendor#
IC35L060AVER07-0) that Oracle uses. In Mac G3/450, OS8.6. Fast,
reliable. I'm getting a second soon.

Paul Butterfield

cf-lists@... wrote:
> 
> The latest I've heard about a class action lawsuit against IBM for their
> hard drives does, in fact, involve their deskstar hard drives--specifically,
> the 75GXP. My best recollection is that it was a problem with the fragility
> of their glass platters, but I couldn't swear to that. Here's an article:
> 
> http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,67608,00.asp
> 
> If you google on [ibm deskstar class action], you'll come up with loads of
> links on the subject.
> 
> Nevertheless, I am, for no good reason, a moderately consistent buyer of IBM
> drives. I guess I started buying them because they, at one point, were the
> leaders in data density. I've had one go bad (a 10K RPM SCSI drive), and
> getting the warranty replacement was trivially easy, and remarkably speedy.
> The present generation of 7.2K RPM drives, the 60GXP, is not, to my
> knowledge, subject to the reliability problems that are reputed to plague
> the 75GXP. The 60GXP also has a higher data density (20 GB/platter, rather
> than 15GB/platter) and so should be faster, and probably generate less heat
> (fewer moving objects).
> 
> For what it's worth, I own a 60GB 60GXP and am about to order another to use
> in a striped configuration. If I were starting from scratch, I'd probably
> simply buy the least expensive 20 GB/platter, 7200 RPM, ATA 100 drive I
> could find. I'm generally skeptical of the idea that, in computer
> components, you can reliably correlate brand name & reliability.
> 
> Chris

--

As I recall, the 60's and smaller used an aluminum substrate for the 
platters, the ones in question used a glass substrate. The 60's seem 
trouble-free.

Tim Spragens

> Regarding the 60GXP;
> 
> I'm using an IBM 60G  AV drive - the same drive (Vendor#
> IC35L060AVER07-0) that Oracle uses. In Mac G3/450, OS8.6. Fast,
> reliable. I'm getting a second soon.
> 
> Paul Butterfield
> 

--
Tim Spragens
http://www.borderless-photos.com
&
http://www.borderless-photos.de