Performance comparison: 15K SCSI vs. RAID 0 IDE 7200?

[milkydoo]

Yes, this is yet another newb question. I've been reading some scsi guides, but they didn't quite touch on this specifically.

I'm going to be building a system for my friend, and eventually for
myself, but I'm brand new to scsi. I understand that rpm is just one variable in the setup, but these are the two options that he's looking at.

He'll either be getting a dual 80Gb IDE for RAID 0, or be using a scsi 18Gb 15K for the boot/app drive, and an 100Gb IDE for bulk data storage.

The system will most likely be an Athlon (@xp2600), with the new Nforce2 chipset and 512 to 1Gb of ram. No other scsi devices will be needed. We're only looking at the scsi to boost multi tasking speed, as we're both power users.

Thanks for any tips or links on this.

 

[GoSharks]

scsi will be faster - unless you plan on working with large files (video/sound editing). raid 0 does not help much when it comes to "everyday" tasks.

 

[LED]

See for yourself...SCSI vs IDE RAID

 

[Peter]

Not measured in this review: CPU load. Also, their price comparison uses a $150 bulk Adaptec card rather than the equally fast and CPU-unloading LSI U160 which is $79 ... retail, including cable and termination.
Also, IDE striping setups with N drives inherently have an N times lower reliability than a single IDE drive, which already has much lower reliability than SCSI drives ... particularly in high-load applications.

It might hurt your wallet a bit initially, but if you want a fast and reliable workhorse, go SCSI.

Don't forget your backup solution, either way.