Forums | MacLife
You are not logged in.
#1 2005-03-20 10:30 pm
- Cyberpawz
- Member
- Registered: 2001-11-14
- Posts: 10172
Fiber Channel HDs?
Beyond being new tech, what's the use of Fiber Channel HD's when they are internal, I don't know of any motherboard which could handle such a beast...
Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent of liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.
Bhagavad Gita (c.B.C. 400)
Offline
#3 2005-03-20 11:39 pm
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
or anything that needs access to high amounts of data fast, well, video production and DCC. Some one else will come up with more uses for it.
My Tuna spits in your general direction
Offline
#4 2005-03-21 5:48 am
- Cyberpawz
- Member
- Registered: 2001-11-14
- Posts: 10172
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
Ok, but is there a motherboard that can utilize it that is out there now?
Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent of liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.
Bhagavad Gita (c.B.C. 400)
Offline
#6 2005-03-21 6:06 am
- Cyberpawz
- Member
- Registered: 2001-11-14
- Posts: 10172
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
Alien wrote:
Cyberpawz wrote:
[...] new tech [...]
Hardly.
,xtG
.tsooJ
Nice response 
And as far as I can tell the servers I've been looking at don't use fiber HDs, and I've been looking at some pretty high end ones from IBM... pricewatch within the last month just started posting links about them.
And yes I know they have been around at least since 2003, but the issue here is that the technology is still pretty new at least as the hard drive world comes by, if it was fast enough don't you think they would be using fiber instead of SATA? Since out of what I've been seeing the drive speeds at it's slowest is 5400, but on average 10,000.
So I ask again, before you decide to try another wonderful one word response, are there any motherboards which can handle this type of drive? If so what are they?
Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent of liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.
Bhagavad Gita (c.B.C. 400)
Offline
#7 2005-03-21 6:25 am
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
2003? Try 1990.
Fiber Channel is old hat HD technology. The thing is, it's high-end technology. As in: if Ultra3 SCSI-320 doesn't cut it, you look to FC. FC interface cards are widely available for Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, etc. workstation and server class machines. But they're not cheap. Not by a long shot.
,xtG
.tsooJ
Offline
#8 2005-03-21 8:27 am
- avkills
- demyelinated brain matter
- Registered: 2001-05-09
- Posts: 7237
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
Generally, the drives inside a FibreChannel RAID are UltraSCSI-320. Although in Apples X-RAID, they use dedicated ATA channels for each drive. Doing FibreChannel internal to the computer would be pointless since you can't stripe across enough drives to even make it worth while.
FYI, most professional editors, sound or video, do not use internal drives anyway.
-mark
Offline
#9 2005-03-21 9:44 am
- Jehannum
- Banned
- From: Albuquerque
- Registered: 1999-07-24
- Posts: 8404
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
I haven't seen internal fiber channel hard disks anywhere. Up to this point, fiber channel's primary venue is connecting large RAID devices to a computer, not connecting individual drives.
"Goodness he just keeps going and going. He's like the energizer bunny of stupid." - Neut
Your powers are useless! I'm wearing my tin-foil underwear!
Offline
#10 2005-03-21 11:44 am
- XYZ
- Banned
- Registered: 2000-07-03
- Posts: 10881
Re: Fiber Channel HDs?
I'm no expert, but it seems silly to dedicate so much bandwidth to one or two drives. From what I've read, today's 7200 and 10000 RPM drives have trouble saturating an ATA 133 bus, let alone SATA 150. High-end 15k drives probably can take advantage of SATA 150.
Fiber Channel appears to be logical when dealing with a lot of drives in a RAID array, as with the XServe RAID.
there's really no need for all of this
Offline
