I've always been a SCSI fan.  I've had SCSI on my home computer for 8+ years now.  I've always heard that they multitask much better than IDE drives.   I once ran a test of loading Doom off of the same machine.  Once with a SCSI drive and the other as IDE.   The SCSI kicked its butt.

My current scsi drives are about 3-6 years old.  Old 50 pin scsi and a few of the newer 68 pin scsi's.  

My question.  Is it sill benifical to go the extra mile and get a SCSI drive as my main bootable drive?   I'm looking at getting an Adaptec controller 29160 and a Scsi ULTRA 160 drive. ST318405LW.  Theoretically, up to 160MB a minute.  I think IDE says burstable up to 100MB per minute.

The SCSI would only be for my boot/operating drive.  All my storage would be on cheaper IDE drives on my computer or on my networked 'server' computer.

Thoughts?

SCSI is always nice, and all of the $$$ servers still use it, like wideultra3.  Only thing $$$.
My workstation here is a AP400 from Compaq, and it kicks butt.
Its your $$$, I say go for it.
c-rock

7,

One of the biggest pluses about SCSI is that the controller frees up the CPU from handling the disk access, where as IDE does have more load on your systems processor.  I have found that if you burn CDs, use multi-media (avi, mpegs, mp3), SCSI is usually a better way to go.  Additionally, with the ability to daisy chain mulitple SCSI devices together (such as HD, CDRoms, BackUp devices), you tend to save space in your system box by not having to add extra boards, which will help reduce heat.

If you can afford it, I would definately go SCSI over IDE.

SCSI for me. Specially when your data depends on it.  Much faster, more dependable and of course more $$$

If you're not made of money, why not give some of the onboard IDE RAID 0 motherboards a try?  They have speeds approaching SCSI and cost less than half.  I guess it really depends on what you do with your computer.  I can burn CD's, play games, and download all at the same time without a hiccup.  I have an Athlon 1.4Gz, 256Mb RAM, 60GB IBM GXP, and 12x burner and doing this is not a problem.  With my Abit KT7a RAID motherboard, I could get another 60GB IBM HD and RAID them for super speed.  Just an idea.



toast

I've always known about the buring CD's with scsi is better.  [:D]   I've never heard about an IDE Raid 0 motherboard.  I'll check it out.

I was looking at Tyan motherboards.  S2390b with an Althon 1.4 for only 249.00!  

I just checked access times for some Seagate Drives.

ST318405lw 10,000 rpm  5.4ms
ST318451LW 15,000 rpm  3.9ms
The Seagate IDE's are around 8.9ms

Though I use SCSI right now, I will probably use an IDE raid setup on my next system. The performance advantage of SCSI just aint worth the cost difference anymore.

Raid 0?  I am unsure about performance, but I would highly suggest that you do not do this for reliablity of the harddrives.

The cost isn't as bad as it used to be.

You just need a controller $182.00 and Drive.  18 Gig SCSI ULTRA 160 for $204.00   All the other drives can be IDE.  

Think this is the way I'll go when I upgrade.

personally i wouldnt, but thats just cause im worried about price and function more than preformance. SCSI is better tho

I'll probably be the only one to say this, but I wouldn't waist the money on SCSI unless it was on a heavily used server.

Recently, Maxtor announced the release of the new Ultra ATA/133 technology. Almost all major chipset suppliers plan to support this technology, which is a definate plus. They have also announced the formation of the Big Drive Initiative, a group of leading technology companies that plan to break the standard 32bit 137gb barrier. This new technology would use a 48 bit data path which will increase the maximum ATA (IDE) disk size to around 144 petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes.)

Anyway, my point is this: With Ultra ATA/133 and the extremely large IDE drives that will soon hit the market, I'd just wait. The cost will far outweigh the benefit in the SCSI vs IDE battle..

Good luck!!!

on edit--

The newer motherboards with the AMD 760(761) chipset often have aftermarket RAID controllers build in. First, let me explain what RAID 0 and RAID 1 is:

RAID 0 is disk striping only. This means that it will combine your two (or more) physical disks into 1 large drive (2 40gb disks would equal 1 80gb disk.) This is a great way to effectively increase performance because data is written twice as fast as it is only one drive were used. This implementation of RAID provides no fault tolerance.

RAID 1 is disk mirroring. This is when there is another disk that "mirrors" the original disk. This provides a moderate level of fault tolerance.

RAID 0/1 is a combination of the two (duh!)

Anyway, you can effectively out-perform the transfer rates of any SCSI drive if you decide to use Ultra ATA/100 in a RAID 0 configuration. This is just something to think about. It will save you some money and will provide you with a faster product! Good luck..

SCSI is nice but way overpriced for all but heavy use. Most of us buy a unit that is far more than we need and buy the next when  it is fashionable. I love to watch people, I have a 1GHZ well I have a 1.4. My 400 mhz laptop can do all that I want to do. Yes my main computer is a 900 mhz. Some games run better on it but as we are not gamers it is no big deal. When the price of the chip goes down we will upgrade to the max of the board.

I have SCSI hard disks on one of my unix machine that have been running continuously for 7 years.  Knock on wood they will keep going for a few more years.

I always try to get a PC with SCSI.  One nice thing is it allows me to move my second or third hard disk easily to the next machine.

GunLvr

I have been running SCSI for quite a few years, up until the last month.  I Baught a 29160N controller about a year and a half ago, along with an 9g Atlas4 7200RPM drive, I paid 250 for the controller, and 205 for the drive. About a month and a half ago the drive took a dump, ( sounds like a mini arc welder inside it now )

I built a system with the same MB and processor as mine about 4 months ago, and put in a Deskstar U/100 30g drive, I was impressed with the performance of that drive ( wich at the time was 130 )   I have finally got around to ordering myself a drive for that system ( actually my main system, which ran my web server, mail server, and 2 FTP servers) It should be here sometime this week.  I ordered an IBM Deskstar 40g for $109.  SCSI is nice, don't get me wrong, but for how much better IDE has became, I can no longer justify replacing it with another SCSI. ( either that or I am just burned out from working ISP tech support for the last year and a half that I can't stand to look at my PC when I get home).

My system;
Asus CUB-XE MB
P3 750
512MB Micron PC-133
SB-64 ( had bad luck with SB live )
USR Curior external modem V.Everything (only way to fly when you are stuck on dial up)
3c905B 3Com NIC
S540 32MB video
Win2000 Pro running Apache web server, MDaemon mail server and 2 instances of Serv-U ftp server...

The Burner is in my pc at work... why use it at home when I have a T3 at work fed by 2 OC3 lines [bounce]

About the only thing I understood in all these posts was the ENGLISH words. [:)]

Carry On.

CB

SCSI allows the info to "bypass the CPU and allows for better burns and overall quicker performance from a drive. BUT.... a few tests that i have read shows SCSI and IDE to bench mark about the same. Do a Google "IDE VS SCSI" search and you'll find the same info.

SCSI does allow another "door" into your computer. Much bigger door than USB.

FIREWIRE!!!!! SCSI and IDE are dead!  
Currently up to 400mbs transfer, as soon as FIREWIRE b comes out, 800mbs to 1600mbs.  Hot swapable daisy chained devices.  Try that with SCSI.  It's also a lot cheaper than SCSI.

The only time I have noticed any increase was when I was decompressing a large .RAR file,, I could run other apps better during this time....

IMHO based on how much parts de-preciate in price, and "bang for the buck" SCSI is really only worth it if you are running a large scale server ( like an ISP mail server or big web servers, corperate billing systems and stuff like that).  Unless you actually need to run more than 4 hard drives on your box.  ( SCSI benefit you can run 14 drives)

I have however notice a bigger jump going from IDE/66 to IDE RAID/66  than IDE/66 to SCSI/160
I will have to check out IDE/100RAID

I'm running an Adaptec 29160 and Seagate ST318404LW on my software development machine. For me it was worth it because I do a lot of disk intensive work.

There is always benefit to moving the OS to your fastest drive. At the very least, the swap file should be on the fastest drive to increase the speed of virtual memory access.

Some argue SCSI is most beneficial on servers, but I've ran my system against fast IDE systems and win every time. So, at least for me I'm sticking with SCSI.

It is a big misconception that SCSI will be faster than ATA-100 HDs. In most cases, ATA-100 will match or barely underperform 160 SCSI in general use. SCSI shows it's stuff when you run a RAID 0 or 1 on a high hit or volume server, or when you handle large files like for CAD or Photoshop.

Unless you handle 1 GB Photoshop files or large simulations on Solid Edge (a CAD program), there is no reason to pay the premium for SCSI. In fact, it would be dumb to.

I have a IDE RAID 0 on my computer. I have two IBM 75GXP 45 GB HDs at 7200 RPM, stripped RAID 0, which allows me to use it as one big HD. It is super fast, and it is the best you can get while using Win2k's crappy HD management scheme (crappy according to my Sun OS loving computer science friends).

Even if you don't use a RAID, a single ATA-100 IBM drive is all you need. Actually, you will double your speed if you get say, two 30 GB 75 GXPs. Make sure you get the higher end IDE drive from IBM, the 75GXP last time I checked, because there is a difference with the platters I think. I forgot, it's been awhile.

Regardless, you can't go wrong using an IDE RAID.

themao [chainsawkill]

I have adaptec 29160 for $199.00 and the 18GB IBM 10,000rpm Ultra160 SCSI drives for $199.00

I also have...
Maxtor and Seagate 20GB ATA100 drives...$89.00
Maxtor 40gb ATA100 drive...$129.00
Maxtor and IBM 60GB ATA100 drive...$189.00

Same day shipping and credit cards accepted.

shadows

Ah yes.
Pepsi vs. Coke
Miller vs. Bud
SCSI vs. IDE

pick which ever one floats your boat.  Unless there's some need to have SCSI, I wouldn't though. IDE and SCSI performance on single spindle systems are almost the same.  The other thing to consider is what OS you are planning on using with this machine...ME? then go IDE for sure.  2k, XP, or a usable os would have some greater use of SCSI.  

Personally, if you are going to drop a server in your house, might as well dump the money for disks into that machine instead, and just get IDE for the workstations.  You do have 100mbit ethernet at least, right? [:)]

My current setup has a server with a pair of 9gb 7200 drives and 4 4gb 5400 rpm drives (all about 4 years old and going strong). All the data (music, shared apps, etc) go onto this machine.  One workstation has ATA100 IDE drive, the other has ATA33.  Differnces in disk performance are negligable to the end user.  

My advice is worth every cent you paid for it.