SCSI vs EIDE

[Josh42]

I was thinking about making my next system scsi based, ie. hard drive, cd drive, etc. What are the real advantages to scsi versus IDE. Thanks.

[CMonster]

SCSI is also superior in several other ways to IDE but these may not be as improtant to a home user.

Maximum PC March edition has a fair article on IDE vs SCSI and without getting into endless details they sum it up by saying, "SCSI technology is superior to IDE in every way possible, so based on sheer features and robustness, we hand the tiara to SCSI."

But SCSI is also noted as being on average 3x as expensive as comparable IDE technology.

A couple additional notes:

Keep in mind that SCSI-160 or ATA-100 refer to burst rate and not sustained data transfer, other things being equal, you may find that and 10K RPM SCSI drive and a 10K RPM IDE drive have about the same sustained data transfer rate on large files.

You can also purchase some motherboards with integrated SCSI controllers so you need not give up a PCI slot -sadly I have yet to see such a board for the AMD (best-CPU-on-the-market) Thunderbird.



[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 03-14-2001).]

[Nighthawk]

SCSI takes up a PCI slot for the controller card, but offloads CPU overhead. It can also transfer data at 160mbps instead of 100 (Ultra160). 15k max RPMs instead of 7200 or 10K.

[Lebo]

My experience with scsi, revolves around my burner (8 X). When I use my scsi burner to make disk image (ATAPI reader is 32 X) I notice that it burns the image only about 20% slower. It uses approx 10% of the cpu resources compared with approx 90 using ATAPI.

I would love a more complete scsi system, unfortunately it is just too expensive!!!

[linux_guru]

It's a bit like Porsche Vs. Chrysler.

[rlpos]

Basically they do the same.I have run the scsi before and it is a little faster but the average user would not physically see the difference. If you are planning on running many multiple device's it is great(that is after all why they were designed I think) It is however a bit more involved when you set it up and can create headaches that are not as easily resolved as IDE or EIDE systems

[neo_otyugh]

if you got really big bucks go for scsi320...