SAS drives are much faster and being enterprise class hardware will last
longer (on average). Of course there is a couple of tradeoffs. One being
the cost of them, here in Australia a 320GB SATA drive will cost you
about $100 while the equivalent SAS drive is $770. The second thing is
the noise they make. SAS drives are more for the server environment, so
they spin at 15,000 rpm (sounds like a jet taking off when they spin
up). 

SAS doesn't suffer the problems of configuration of SCSI, these issues
are on of the reason for SAS being created.


Cheers


Cam


Cameron J Nowell 
Microscopy Research and Imaging Core Facility
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
12 St Andrews Place
East Mebourne, 3002
Victoria, Australia

Phone: +61396561243
Fax:       +61396561411
Mobil:  +614122882700



-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Johan Henriksson
Sent: Wednesday, 24 September 2008 6:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Advice for offline image analysis computer


Craig Brideau wrote:
> Does anyone use those SAS hard drives in their machines?  I'm just
using
> SATA; I was wondering if SAS was a substantial improvement (i.e. worth
the
> extra cost)?
>   
SATA here. I think the cost is the small problem; maintenance is worse.
I expect the same problem as SCSI has, that is,
interfaces become obsolete way too fast and finding spare parts is hard.
but if you run a server, need the performance and
can afford the work to maintain it, don't hesitate. a SATA RAID array
might give the same performance though, with less trouble,
and other advantages.

-- 
--
------------------------------------------------
Johan Henriksson
MSc Engineering
PhD student, Karolinska Institutet
http://mahogny.areta.org http://www.endrov.net

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