CDRW IDE -vs- SCSI -vs- USB

[jman01pa]

I am looking to get a new burner. What benefit is a SCSI over an IDE burner or USB? I currently have an internal HP 7100 IDE and think its time to upgrade. I have an Adaptec 2940uw SCSI card so that wont be an extra expense. I know the SCSI is better but why? And does it make a big difference?

I would appreciate anyones two cents worth....


J http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[hd581]

Wow, if you already have a SCSI card (and that's a particularly good one), then I'd go w/ that. Especially since SCSI CDROM's aren't as picky about how they're connected (you generally want to separate channels when using IDE). Dunno about USB though.

Just my sqrt((1+j4)(1-j2)-j2)-1 cents.....

[balor]

ide burners have gotten better in the past couple of years and a bud of mine has a usb one which he's always having probs with as for me i'm scsi all the way that coupled with a scsi cd-rom and hdd i make very few coasters http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif good luck on whatever you pick

[sys-eng]

For starters, IDE (and EIDE, ATA, DMA, UDMA) is a single-threaded I/O interface whereas SCSI is a multi-threaded I/O interface. SCSI allows queing of commands for the same peripheral, so copying between a SCSI hard drive and a SCSI CD should be faster than between IDE components though I have not seen a comparison test.

IDE takes up to 95% of the CPU during data transfers, SCSI only uses about 5% of the CPU for buffer management.

[Szech]

Data transfer rates are also better with SCSI, so if you get one of those insanely fast CD-RW drives, it'd be on a SCSI interface. Since you already have the card, I say go SCSI.

[This message has been edited by Szech (edited 04-14-2000).]