This will never be settled! Do you use an all SCSI or all IDE based sytem and why?

[borealiss]

<< How about SMP + SCSI? That's what I'm running. Yay! >>

that's what i'm talking about

 

[Dennis Travis]

IDE for the Hard Drives but SCSI for the burner and CDROM. I have tried it side by side and with all the work I do on a system it's nice to be able to burn and do all my work at the same time without Buffer Underruns and having to be so carefull. Modern IDE is fine for a lot of people but for people that do a lot of work and want to burn at the same time at 12-16x speeds, SCSI can't be beat. By the way I am not putting down an All SCSI system at all. If I could afford it I would probably upgrade everything to SCSI but for now will settle for just the burner and CDROM.

 

[Czar]

All IDE, cheap and big
No SCSI, would cost me 10x more to get the same amount of space I have just with SCSI disks.

 

[Basse]

People, people! Won't you all agree with me that this is a very subjective matter of choise?

1. If you are indeed &quot;rich&quot; and have an unlimited budget for building a system, I see no reason why anyone shouldn't go with SCSI. As I see it, with the pricetag no longer being an issue, you will only benefit from this with lower seek times, higher bandwidth, higher reliability and so on blablabla. It can also be that you have the money but simply don't care about the above mentioned or just don't see how the benefits would aid you in your everyday PC use.

2. You don't have the money to spend (I know I don't), and choose to go with IDE drives. This provides for a very cost effective sollution, giving you overall a very high performing machine albeit not as high performing as a SCSI sollution. Today's top-notch IDE drives are amazingly fast compared to just a year ago (using 2xIBM 75GXP myself), but there is no way in hell I wouldn't trade it for a 10,000rpm SCSI disk + 160 controller @ any time if it didn't affect my wallet by such a degree.




<< All IDE for me...cuz I ain't spendin' extra $$$ for a few measly seconds saved or MBps here and there with SCSI. >>



NFS4 doesn't want to acknowledge the benefits of using SCSI because he is too hung up on the money issue . I know that he realizes the benefits of using SCSI. I always read his posts and he is not new to computers, he just can't make &quot;SCSI+$$$=performance-worth-the-money&quot; compute.

I don't have the money right now to invest in a high-end SCSI machine, but I would't hesitate one ms to go for it. Not that I acctually need it but it would sure spare me some time shovelling those vobs around.

I coul'd go on forever with examples but then you would just give me more hell than you'll probably do now. Just to end with a quote that explains the above for me also...



<< Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong. >>





/B

 

[PliotronX]

IDE for the harddrives, SCSI for the CDROM/CD burner. Simple reason for this: I won't benefit much from SCSI HDs, and the SCSI CD config lets me burn and even back up PSX games whilst playing Q3



<< Both my systems are pure SCSI. Mainly because the ladies dig it. What woman wouldn't be impressed with the line, &quot;Hey baby, wanna go back to my place and get SCSI?&quot; >>



lol some original material

 

[AdamK47]

What makes people think that you can't play games while burining a CD with an IDE CDRW? I play Counter-Strike when burning a CD on my Creative Labs IDE burner.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Jgtdragon - I would recommend extra cooling, but it may not be necessary. I currently just have an 80MM fan blowing on it. Mine has no heatsink, though speaking of heatsinks, I had this drive at home for a while (as opposed to at school where it is now) laying on the desk, and I had a spare secc2 heatsink laying around, I just rested the heatsink on top of the HD and plugged in the fan, damn it kept that drive cool.

AdamK - how about FPS type games? From what I understand counterstrike does not put much strain on your system.

 

[ahfung]

I tried playing IGI and Colin McRae Rally 2 while buring with my IDE 4424, no a big deal.

 

[randomlinh]

you know, this poll is kinda useless... most of us here are pretty much regular ol' users when it comes to scsi vs. ide... the majority here probably doesn't have a practical use for scsi. I have a scsi cdr and dvd, the cdr came w/ a card for $200 (altho, already had a 4x panasonic scsi) a year ago, and at the time, i had worked w/ ide cdrs and it was no good.. AT THE TIME. i threw in a toshiba scsi dvd mainly for the hell of it But anyway, back to the point, unless you're runner a server of some sort that has demand.. don't need it.

my uncle for instance has a rack full of fibre channel drives.. hehe.. each rack has 7 drivers, racks range from 9gb to 50gb sets heheh

 

[CygnusX1]

I use IDE for my home system and SCSI for my home studio system. Performance SCSI drives are usually A/V rated which means they are better suited for writing information that can't be interrupted. (i.e. Audio or Video streams) The other benefit is that I can add up to 6 drives where IDE is limited to 4 (even more with some adapters). A/V information takes up lots of room. SCSI drives are a lot more expensive than IDE drives though.

-CygnusX1

 

[Viperoni]

Best return for investmentis:
IDE Raid for OS/Everything
SCSI Cdrom (fast), SCSI Burner (whatever), small SCSI HD (4.3gigs is more than enough)
And a Adaptec 2940u for $40 and you're set.

 

[thorin]

Borealiss
&quot;<< Wow something else SerialATA is bringing to the arena. >>

sorry, serial ata isn't even out yet. why not compare serial ata to the next revision of scsi then, which isn't even out yet, or the next version of firewire, which isn't even out yet. even when serial ata devices start showing up, its user base can't even be compared to the likes of scsi or eide. if serial ata was available in mass right now with wide support, then it might be a player, but until i start seeing them in computers and the peripherals that support it, then it's a non-issue. &quot;

Agreed we shouldn't be comparing SerialATA to current technologies, however it is completely backward compatible and should hit the mass market in 1.5yrs. I haven't heard of any SCSI or FireWire upgrades slated to that window or earlier.

Pariah
&quot;One thing to add. Serial ATA has been mentioned a few times as the next big thing in ATA. Which in essence it is, but it will do nothing for performance which a lot of you seem to think. With both ATA and SCSI, the drives are the performance limiters today, not the interfaces. If you put an IDE drive on a SCSI interface it will not be any faster, just as it won't be any faster on a serial ATA interface. &quot;

WRONG
With current IDE/ATA interfaces only 1 drive can be accessing the bus (channel) at a time, thus on a single channel you can only read OR write. With SerialATA you can be reading from one drive and writting to another on the same channel at the same time, this will seriously increase performance. The drives will be faster simply because we're talking about drives 1.5years from now, and drives which will be made to take advantage of the new architecture (interface). However if you did just throw two of today's IDE drives on a SerialATA interface that would increase performance because they can both be accessed at the same time.

Thorin

 

[madfeetch]

Hooray! That's what I've wanted to say! $400 for 18GB! Jeez! For $400 you can get 3 30GB HDD equalling 90GB! I would much rather have 90GB of storage space over a few milliseconds faster seek time.
And BTW, I'm all IDE. I can't wait for CerealATA though. I just had some chex and they were a little soggy.

 

[Informant X]

I too am all IDE. I happen to agree with NFS4. (SCSI + $$$ != The benefits) IMHO. Some of the drives are crazy money. I could have like RAID 4+0 going on in my computer at the same capacity of some of the SCSI drives out there. No don't get me wrong and i think EVERYONE would agree, i would have SCSI if it was cheaper, and i had the money to blow but I and most everyone doesn't. I'm more concerned with my frames per second the ability to multitask. That being said i'd rather spend my money on something will show a big increase in my FPS like a CPU or Vid card.

 

[kyoshozx]

I use to have an all scsi based system, but now i have an extra ibm 45 gig for storage of extra files. But my main drive is a 18gig cheetah and a scsi plextor cd-rom.

In my experience scsi based systems definately &quot;feel&quot; faster than ide. My scsi based system feels more responsive. Maybe it's because of the lower seek times or the better multiasking. Another thing that i've noticed is that when i play the Team arena demo, i'm definately one of the first person's to enter the game and I'm usually playing with a friend that has same hardware cpu/mb except for the fact he uses ide drives and he has more ram than I. But for everyday use i'm sure most people wont be able to tell the difference. Just like most won't be able to tell the difference between an 850mhz cpu and a 900mhz cpu.

 

[borealiss]

<< Agreed we shouldn't be comparing SerialATA to current technologies, however it is completely backward compatible and should hit the mass market in 1.5yrs. I haven't heard of any SCSI or FireWire upgrades slated to that window or earlier. >>

when you mean backwards compatible, do you mean serial ata will be able to support classic eide devices with some type of adapter or that future revisions of serial ata will support devices from prior revisions of serial ata? if you meant that new serial ata revisions will support older serial ata revisions, it's going to take some time to have a user base that big. but if it does indeed become cheaper then scsi and rivals the performance of scsi as well, then i don't have a problem switching over. but when newer technologies come out, the hardware tends to be expensive just like firewire hard drives. the link you gave even said that they will only be found in higher end pc's at first, so scsi imo will retain an edge over serial ata for quite some time.

 

[thorin]

&quot;when you mean backwards compatible, do you mean serial ata will be able to support classic eide devices with some type of adapter or that future revisions of serial ata will support devices from prior revisions of serial ata?&quot;

I mean both. You will be able to use a dongle/gender bender to use current ATA/IDE drives with SerialATA cards/motherboards. And just like ATA33 drives are compatible with ATA66 and ATA100, SerialATA 150 drives will run on SerialATA300 buses.

&quot;...but when newer technologies come out, the hardware tends to be expensive just like firewire hard drives. the link you gave even said that they will only be found in higher end pc's at first, so scsi imo will retain an edge over serial ata for quite some time.&quot;

From the articles I've read manufacturers are saying max 10% price premium for the first little while. (So a $400 ATA/IDE drive would have a $440 SerialATA counter part.....not a big deal).

----From here down is my opinion, you don't have to agree, but I think it makes sense-----

I don't agree that SerialATA will be aimed at the high end PC market first, this simply doesn't make sense. Most technologies similar to this get their sea legs growing up in the Low/Mid range and then get adopted by the high end market once they've established themselves.

I would read &quot;found in higher end pcs&quot; more like meaning that when they are released you are more likely to be seen in standard chipsets (440BX, 820, via's current offerings, AMD 750/760 type chipsets) then in integrated (extreme low end) chipsets (like todays i810/i815). They will appear in our systems and buiness systems before they appear in Joe Average from Bummsville Iowa's system. And in Joe Average type systems before they make it to the high end.

Thorin

 

[Pariah]

Thorin,

You missed the point completely. Let me reiterate, serial ATA will not make AN (as in singular) ATA drive faster simply by being on a new interface. If you think it can, I'd really like to see how. The interface is not what dictates a drive's performance today, and it won't be until IDE drives hit around 85-90MB/s, which is no time soon. A piece of junk 2400RPM ATA drive is still a piece of junk 2400RPM drive on serial ATA.

&quot;The drives will be faster simply because we're talking about drives 1.5years from now&quot;

Which has nothing to do with serial ATA, just the evolution of technology. I guarantee you we will not see a 15kRPM IDE drive in the next 1.5 years, so SCSI will still have a distinct performance advantage moving forward from there.

Now, as for you are talking about. Yes, the interface can increase performance when multiple devices are being accessed at once.

&quot;With SerialATA you can be reading from one drive and writting to another on the same channel at the same time, this will seriously increase performance&quot;

Which is the same thing as having 2 drives on seperate parallel channels. You will not get anything out of that until you have at least 3 hard drives. With serial ATA still only supporting 2 devices per channel, you're not getting much of anything out of that. If you want support for a large number of drives, you still have to go SCSI. If serial ATA supported a large number of drives per channel, I would see the serial nature as a real benefit, but with the 2 drive limit, who cares.

 

[thorin]

&quot;You missed the point completely. Let me reiterate, serial ATA will not make AN (as in singular) ATA drive faster simply by being on a new interface. If you think it can, I'd really like to see how. The interface is not what dictates a drive's performance today, and it won't be until IDE drives hit around 85-90MB/s, which is no time soon. A piece of junk 2400RPM ATA drive is still a piece of junk 2400RPM drive on serial ATA.&quot;

I never said that the bus would make the drives faster. IBMs next gen drives will be pushing 40MB/s sustained (previously linked). So 85-90MB/s in 1.5 to 2 years is not that great a feet. Please feel free to quote where I said putting an old drive on a new bus would increase that singular drive's performance.

&quot;<<With SerialATA you can be reading from one drive and writting to another on the same channel at the same time, this will seriously increase performance>>

Which is the same thing as having 2 drives on seperate parallel channels.&quot;

No it isn't, because 2 drives on parrallel channels cannot be both the source and destination at the same time. You can't copy from Dive A to Drive B while copying from Drive B to Drive A. In scsi you can do this, and in SerialATA you will be able to do this.

Also how many people that only have 2 drives do you know, and how many of them would care about SCSI or SerialATA.

&quot; You will not get anything out of that until you have at least 3 hard drives.&quot;

Hmm that's interesting, you must have a very old computer. In mine I have 2 hard drives (standard), DVDROM (CDROM), and CDR/W. Wow 4 drives and I didn't even try. Now lets add a tape drive, jazz, zip, etc.... It isn't hard for most business/enthusiast users to have and be accessing more then 2 drives at a time.

Also I haven't read anywhere that there's a 2 drive per channel limit (as you mentioned). There was one example in the whitepaper where they discuss connecting two drives but they never state any limit. Also if you've been around this board for a while you'll know that alot of people run more then 4 drives using, ATA66/ATA100 controller cards, RAID setups, motherboards with more then 2 channels, etc...

Thorin

Edit:
UGH, it's been a long day, I keep noticing typos....just ignore them if there's more.

 

[Hard_Boiled]

All SCSI for me. I could understand if people really need alot of data stored and can actually fill up these 45-80 gig hard drives, then of course it would cost a fortune to get that much space in SCSI drives. But I don't require much space for my computer needs. Between my 2 networked computers, I have 19 gigs. A 10 gig IDE drive in my old machine, and a 9 gig Atlas 10K in my new machine. And I love my Atlas 10K. I could really care less if it's SCSI or not, if you want a top of the line hard drive you have to go SCSI. The way I see it, the hard drive is the slowest part in a computer. I'd rather have a 10K SCSI drive then some ungodly expensive 3D card (so shoot me i have both).

But alas a simple 9.1 gig drive may not last me much longer. I'm debating on if I should spend approximately $100 for small IDE drive or $200 for a 9.2 gig Atlas 10K II. Payday is coming up, gotta decide soon.

 

[NFS4]

Then tell me this...I have a 27GB Western Digital IDE drive. I'm only using about 5.3 Gigs of it. How much would it cost me to get a decent 18GB 7200+ RPM SCSI drive + good controller??

 

[FrogDog]

All IDE for me because I don't have any extra cash to shell out for SCSI. Plus I don't need it for what I do.

 

[Pariah]

&quot;Please feel free to quote where I said...&quot;

I didn't say you said that. That was my original point and you completely missed it.

&quot;You can't copy from Dive A to Drive B while copying from Drive B to Drive A. In scsi you can do this, and in SerialATA you will be able to do this.&quot;

Sorry to inform you, but you can't do that with any current or announced future hard drive. Once again, it is the hard drive that is the limiting factor here, not the interface. It is a physical impossibility for a drive that can only utilize one read head at a time to read and write to itself simultaneously. Drive A can write data from B to itself. Then it needs to stop, move the heads to a different place on the drive to read data for drive B. What Serial ATA does that SCSI does now is allow for command queuing and out of order execution. A serial ATA drive can receive commands and queue them up while it is executing another command, unlike parallel IDE which can only be receiving a command or executing one. This is not the same as sending and receiving data at the same time. Even with this feature, the drives can still only execute one command at a time. As you add drives to a chain, the ability to receive commands and execute another command at the same time as well as access multiple drives at once becomes increasingly vital. With SCSI that can have up to 15 devices on a chain, these abilities are an absolute necessity. With serial ATA that has 2 devices on a chain, the features are nice, but no where near as vital or beneficial.

&quot;Also how many people that only have 2 drives do you know.&quot;

The vast majority of people who own computers only have one hard drive, let alone more than 2.

&quot;In mine I have 2 hard drives (standard), DVDROM (CDROM), and CDR/W.&quot;

Hard drives are the main bandwidth hogs, the performance penalty running a DVD/CDROM while accessing a hard drive is minimal at most. If you access 2 IDE hard drives on the same channel, the total bandwidth used will be greater than the max throughput of either single drive. The max throughput for a CDROM drive of maybe 5-6MB/s is negligible in the overall scheme of things especially when you consider it is sharing the bandwidth with a maximum of one other device.

&quot;Also I haven't read anywhere that there's a 2 drive per channel limit (as you mentioned).&quot;

I have not yet come across anything that explicitly states this, but if it is a feature, wouldn't it be listed somewhere? Quantum has a few pages on Serial ATA, including a chart that compares Serial ATA features and benefits to current interfaces. No where in the chart does it mention the ability to run more than 2 devices on a channel. I along with most people, I would consider this a huge plus, if it was a feature why is it not stated anywhere and why are all the diagrams I have seen been limited to 2 drives on a channel?

&quot;Also if you've been around this board for a while you'll know that alot of people run more then 4 drives using, ATA66/ATA100 controller cards, RAID setups, motherboards with more then 2 channels, etc...&quot;

So what?

 

[thorin]

&quot;Sorry to inform you, but you can't do that with any current or announced future hard drive. Once again, it is the hard drive that is the limiting factor here, not the interface. It is a physical impossibility for a drive that can only utilize one read head at a time to read and write to itself simultaneously. Drive A can write data from B to itself. Then it needs to stop, move the heads to a different place on the drive to read data for drive B. What Serial ATA does that SCSI does now is allow for command queuing and out of order execution. A serial ATA drive can receive commands and queue them up while it is executing another command, unlike parallel IDE which can only be receiving a command or executing one. This is not the same as sending and receiving data at the same time. Even with this feature, the drives can still only execute one command at a time. As you add drives to a chain, the ability to receive commands and execute another command at the same time as well as access multiple drives at once becomes increasingly vital. With SCSI that can have up to 15 devices on a chain, these abilities are an absolute necessity. With serial ATA that has 2 devices on a chain, the features are nice, but no where near as vital or beneficial.&quot;

Ok I admit I wasn't clear here. Here's a better way to say it: given current IDE/ATA technology on a single channel with 2 drives you would have to read all your data into a buffer then write it to the other disk on the channel. With SerialATA you can be reading from one drive while writing to the second on the same channel.

&quot;<<Also how many people that only have 2 drives do you know.>>

The vast majority of people who own computers only have one hard drive, let alone more than 2.&quot;

I disagree, but we'd have to do a forum poll to see. It isn't just Hard Drives that come in to this equation, it's all the drives we've mentioned. If not then your point about multiple devices on scsi is no point at all.

&quot;Hard drives are the main bandwidth hogs, the performance penalty running a DVD/CDROM while accessing a hard drive is minimal at most. If you access 2 IDE hard drives on the same channel, the total bandwidth used will be greater than the max throughput of either single drive. The max throughput for a CDROM drive of maybe 5-6MB/s is negligible in the overall scheme of things especially when you consider it is sharing the bandwidth with a maximum of one other device.&quot;

Again I have to completely disagree. At 10x my DVDROM hogs 13.8MB/s a little less then half what the top line IDE HDs take right now. A 40x CDROM eats up 6MB/s let alone a 52x or 72x. Now put a CDR/W in the mix, and any other removable storage....

You continue to treat this discussion from a Joe Average point of view, even though one of your major issues is more drives per bus (channel). I agree Joe Average with his single HD and single CDROM would care less about ATA/SerialATA/SCSI. Look at this from simply a technology stand point. (If you have to then use the users community here as a guide...these are the people that care about these things).

&quot;<<Also if you've been around this board for a while you'll know that alot of people run more then 4 drives using, ATA66/ATA100 controller cards, RAID setups, motherboards with more then 2 channels, etc...>>

So what? &quot;

My point was that the people who need more then 4 drives (if there is a max of 4 on SerialATA), have already found ways around the issue.

Thorin

 

[Hard_Boiled]

NFS4, to get a controller and an 18 gig 7200 rpm drive would cost over 300. I'd rather buy a 9 gig 10K drive, prices on those range from $150-$250. Also, anyone who wants a damn good controller card should give a good look at the Tekram DC-390U2W. It's Ultra2 SCSI, not Ultra160, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that it's a solid performer at a great price, and I've never heard of people having problems with it. I don't know what chipset the new Tekram Ultra160 cards use, but this one uses a Symbios chip which is quite common, and compatible with most OS's. HyperMicro has great prices on hard drives, but I'm not sure if they carry the DC-390U2W anymore.