[robespierre]

That's an interesting idea. Any special hw requirements? I bet U320 disks should do both internally and externally. For the external part do you recommend any specific storage solution ? Thanks in advance

I was just picturing a SCA disk in the internal bay, and an external disk in a box connected to the HD68 port on the back of the IP30. The Octane's SCSI busses are UW 40MB/s, so you can use any drives that support that speed (disks that spin faster will have shorter latency). You can read the manpage xlv(7) to see how it works. The two disks would be set up with fx, then added to a volume element of a new XLV volume with xlv_make(1M). The XLV volume can then be assembled (xlv_assemble(1M)) and mounted. XLV also has a "real time" feature optimized for media performance that can keep throughput high.

Code:

man 7 xlv

[weblacky]

Ah, you're right. I was confusing SCSI Ultra (Ultra-2) with Ultra-Fast Wide standards (I always mix those up).

However that even underscores the pathetic speeds we're talking about...still holds my point.

[roach-commuter]

roach-commuter:

I think you may misunderstand how SCSI works.  While it's all called SCSI, due to the command set, each adaptation has distinctions and many are DOWNWARD compatible (with help), except SAS and Fibre Loop (that's the SCSI command set in a brand new medium that isn't downwards compliant).  ULTRA160/320/640 LVD SCSI is very different from the previous incarnations (SCSI-I/II/Ultra fast, Wide).  You could get an U320 DISK that CAN be forced into Single-Ended (SE) mode to work on an Octane.  But that won't make the SCSI Bus move any faster.

.....

Appreciate the long post. It definitely helped to get a clearer picture of what I am getting into. I believe I'll try wiht an 'xlv' RAID first which will probably suit my particular usage here (VHS to digital) , but yeah, definitely FC-AL is the way to go , in general. One such array would also be ideal for a shared network storage project.