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SCSI vs. IDE - what would YOU do?

S

Skaven

Senior member
Ok, here is the situation. I have a Dually Celeron (BP6 2x600) that has been 'SCSI only' since I built it. SCSI subsystem:

Adaptec 2940UW
Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 4gb UW
IBM 4gb narrow
Plextor Ultraplex 40tsi
Plextor 12/10/32s
Jazz 1GB

I needed to get a 'storage drive' to house my media (mp3s, DV etc...) so I recently purchased a WD 120gb 7200rpm ATA/100 drive. I hooked it up to the BP6 ATA/66 controller and use it for storage. Yesterday I decided to bench the two drives (Sandra) to see how fast/slow they are.

The WD 120gb scored ~28000 on Sandra
The Seagate 4gb UW scored ~8000

Uhh... WOAH. Thats DAMN slow. On top of it, the Seagate drive is one LOUD mother! I've been satisfied with the performance of my system with the SCSI components. I like the minimal CPU usage (0-1% while benching vs. 6-8% for the IDE) and I never worry about multitasking (burning, ripping, whatever). But that score seems rediculously low!

So my question is: Should I pull the SCSI drives and just boot/run off of the IDE? I have another system that I could use the SCSI drives in (Linux). I'm not planning on spending any more money for new SCSI technology.

So in the red corner we have the veteran champ: UW SCSI
In the blue corner we have the newcomer: ATA/100

What would YOU do?
 
It would be hard for any 4 gb SCSI drive that is that dated to keep up with a modern drive - especially a WD1200, which is a pretty fast drive as IDE drives go.

For you, I'd definetly boot off of the WD1200 and toss the SCSI - and you probably won't notice the CPU performance hit, so....no worries.
 
I was faced with the same decision several years ago. Swallow my pride and go back to IDE or spend a significant amount of $$$$ to match the speeds of IDE with new SCSI drives. Sigh, I went back. Purely for monitary reasons. If you're not running an ultra 160 drive @ 10k, the new WD drives with the 8 meg buffers are the way to go. Considering that the $$$ for a 120 meg SCSI Ultra 160 10k drive is around 4x times what the IDE costs, why bother? Bragging rights are too expensive for most of us.
 
Heck, of course modern IDE drives are faster than outdated SCSI stuff 😀 I mean...look @ the Morgan core Duron. It's merely a Duron, but it whips the K7-5 Athlons really badly even though the K7-5 chips are called Athlons. 😀
 
IDE is always about 2 years behind SCSI. When upgrading a computer, keep that in mind. In fact the top WD IDE drive is faster on average than all but about 3 SCSI drives.

People often argue one strength of SCSI is that you can keep them forever and move them into your new computer - I see so many people saving old SCSI drives under the false impression that they are faster. Watch the computers listed here and you will frequently see 1GB SCSI drives. Sure the drives have a 5 year warranty and sure they will probably last "forever" - but who really wants to keep small, slow drives? My 25 MHz 486 chip will also probably last "forever", but I ditched that a long time ago. I too moved from an old SCSI drive to IDE and I'm always so happy with the faster IDE performance.

I'd probably move the SCSI to your other box. Especially if you work with large files - SCSI's only important strength is small files. You must think about your use - do you often do intense number crunching at the same time as you are saving many small files? If the answer is yes, then ask is there a significant difference between 600 MHz number crunching and 550 MHz number crunching (using your 8% CPU number)? Only if you answer yes to both is the SCSI drive any use to you in your current box.
 
I've used IDE only due to price, works fine, runs fast, no reliability issues at all encountered by me. I think for price, IDE is definitely the hands down way to go, unless your PC or more importantly server has constant disk access like a game server or something. in 99% of all situations a hdd can be used in, IDE is better simply because an IDE drive with good speed is 1/3 the price or less than a comparatively spec'd SCSI drive.
 
I agree. SCSI is always the one with the best drivees, but that does not mean tat they will last forever. I have a 10K drive, and will probably get a faster one soon. Just because you have a SCSI, like many have stated, that does not mean that it will always be the fastest. Indeed, the Western Digital 100GB 8MB cache drive does beat my 10K SCSI on ocassion, but ony on sustained R/W's. AS you can see, my SCSI, which woops your SCSI, can, and has been whooped in Sust. transfers.

Basically, switch to the IDE. It will provide a better experience as a whole. It will not be able to preform as agilely as mine for an OS duties, but it will suffice.

Just because your dog was the best when you bought it does not mean that it is still the best 5 years down the road.

Shoot it and move on.
 
comparing an old 7200RPM scsi drive to one of the fastest, new IDE drives is stupid.

if you have the $$$ to spare, go scsi, you wont regret it. but most dont have the $$$, or would rather spend it otherwise.
 
SCSI rocks in RAID. Sandra on my 3xU160 10k Fujitsus in RAID 0 went to 65,000. Unfortunately since I added fourth one for RAID5 (software, still not enough money for controller) it dropped to 46,000. They're in my domain/application server. The other three machines are very happy with IDE setups. My suggestion, dump SCSI to the Linux box.
 
Sustained transfer rates are far less important than seek times IMO. That combined with SCSI's ability to que the data IO's means IDE does not come close to SCSI for performance. Its not like a small difference in STR between two drives (one ide, one scsi) is going to be of that much of a benefit compared to seek time and data queing IMO FWIW.
Ive used both SCSI and IDE for my workstation and IDE made me laugh as my whole rig bogged down waiting for the disks to sort themselves out. SCSI is far more pleasing, with a more linear degradation in system performance under heavy multitasking disk IO's.

Back on topic 😉 Yeah, ditch the SCSI and pop the ide to Boot drive till you can afford to upgrade to 10K rpm SCSI.
 
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