SCSI or IDE RAID 0?

[sephroth777]

Anandtech members:

I know this question can answer itself but I am looking for opinions from various experienced users.

I am finally in the market to slowly upgrade my 350 PII to a current powerhouse system.
As of this moment I am looking to upgrade my harddrive and cdrw. Currently I am running a Bigfoot "I know I know" and a HP 4x cdrw.

Over the summer I am planning of most likely purchasing a ABIT motherboard (prolly AT7) with an AMD 2100XP or 2400XP.

I am looking to make one purchase from the following and would like ANY advice since I have done alot of reading and research but want experienced answers.

Purchase one:

A WD 1200JB hard drive (which everyone recommended over the IBM 120GXP)
and
A Plextor 40x/12/40 cdrw

This I would put in a Raid 0 configuration upon purchasing another WD1200JB and have both HD's on the RAID 0 setup with the ABIT motherboard

OR

Purchase two:

A Seagate Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP SCSI HD
and
Adaptec 39160 SCSI Card

I am very well aware of the major price difference but it would be offset since I only need to buy one HD with the SCSI setup and the massive GB the WD offers is not a huge deal for me since I am getting by with my 9.6 GB bigfoot.

I am not too worried about the cost investment, I just want great performance and a system that would last me for sometime to come. I am just wondering if it is at all worth investing in SCSI for a great long term investment.

As of a CDRW drive I can get by with the one I currently have till I can purchase a SCSI one if I go with purchase option 2.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Daovonnaex]

If you're planning to slowly upgrade anyhow, I recommend the latter option. However, that SCSI card costs an arm and a leg. You may want to consider the Tekram U320D, as it is a great deal cheaper and performs as well. As for the hard disk, it's a good choice--but it requires a well-ventilated case and is very loud. You may want to consider a Fujitsu MAM instead, which performs almost identically, but is less noisy and runs at cooler temperatures. If you elect option one, I do not recommend a Plextor CD-RW. A Lite-On 40x outperforms it and costs substantially less.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Hard Drives,
IDE RAID... Cheaper, good Sustained transfer rates, Gobs of space, reliable?
SCSI ... Better Warranty (5 years), Better seek times, not nearly as much capacity, pricy, known to be more reliable, more of a Long term Solution

Go with what you need.

Also as far as CDRWs go, pretty much all the faster drives are IDE. Im pretty sure Sanyo has a 32x or 36x Wide SCSI drive out (or it will be soon) Otherwise everyone else seems to just make IDE cause its cheaper.

 

[QTPie]

SCSI is very expensive but it doesn't give much more performance over IDE since IDE hard drive technology has been improving very fast. However, if you're planning to set up a SEVER, you should go with SCSI because it's more reliable. Otherwise, you should go with IDE.

I don't like to have an IDE RAID 0 array because it's not reliable. Anything happens to one drive, you can make sure that you'll kiss all your valueable MP3 and pr0n goodbye . Do a search in this forum and you'll be amazed how many ppl had lost their data because of RAID 0.

Personally, I have 9.1GB SCSI as my C drive (been a couple of yrs already) and a pair of 80GB in RAID-1 (mirroring) for data and storage. Oh, I use a separate RAID card so that if I upgrade my system, I can bring the whole RAID array with me without losing anything. I put CD-ROM and CD-RW on 2 seperate on-board IDE controllers. My crappy $20 52X CD-ROM is surely faster than my HP 32X SCSI CD-ROM. The 32X IDE CD-RW has burn-proof technology so it's not a concern at all. It never gives me a coaster and burns a full CD less than 5 min. Thus there's no reason for me to buy a pricey SCSI CD-RW.