What do you think: Will SCSI ever replace IDE on mainstream systems?

[Chaotic42]

I searched for SCSI and didn't see any threads about this, so if it's a repost, I'm sorry.

What do you think (and why) about the chances of SCSI taking over IDE for home power users and even eventually for grandma? Is there a possibility? SCSI certainly seems superior in every way. The cost would go down as demand increases. Could it be that SCSI will never enter the home-user realm, just so that they can continue to make higher profits off of workstation and server users?

I know that I'd certainly like the idea of having 30 devices in my computer 😉

Discuss, talk, be nice.

 

[PliotronX]

Unless something else clearly superior comes along....

Could it be that SCSI will never enter the home-user realm, just so that they can continue to make higher profits off of workstation and server users?

Bingo.

 

[anthrax]

The cost of the extra controller already means that it most likely never be in main stream use.......

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: anthrax
The cost of the extra controller already means that it most likely never be in main stream use.......

Well, if you drop the onboard IDE controllers and replace them with Ultra 160 controllers, the costs shouldn't be much more.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Would be nice if SCSI would be more mainstream and cheaper ... however over the last 20 years ... things have been going in the opposihe direction ... more and more IDE ... less and less SCSI

 

[EeyoreX]

With IDE drives getting faster and faster, and capacities growing larger and larger, while SCSI capacities remain (comparitively) small compared to IDE (the largest I've seen was 70 some GB, are there larger?). With this in mind, and despite the speed and arguable reliabilty of SCSI, and now with the promise of SATA I seriously doubt SCSI will ever will be on "grandma's" or even mainstream desktops. Not unless the cost of IDE vs SCSI equalizes. At least that would have to be a first step. Then replace IDE on motherboards with SCSI, and provide a larger selection of SCSI devices (most "Joe Six-pack PC users can't walk into their local Best Buy and get many, if any SCSI devices). I think it would be a steep uphill battle for SCSI to replace IDE in mainstream systems.

\Dan

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX
With IDE drives getting faster and faster, and capacities growing larger and larger, while SCSI capacities remain (comparitively) small compared to IDE (the largest I've seen was 70 some GB, are there larger?). With this in mind, and despite the speed and arguable reliabilty of SCSI, and now with the promise of SATA I seriously doubt SCSI will ever will be on "grandma's" or even mainstream desktops. Not unless the cost of IDE vs SCSI equalizes. At least that would have to be a first step. Then replace IDE on motherboards with SCSI, and provide a larger selection of SCSI devices (most "Joe Six-pack PC users can't walk into their local Best Buy and get many, if any SCSI devices). I think it would be a steep uphill battle for SCSI to replace IDE in mainstream systems.

\Dan

Seagate has a 181.9 GB U160 drive, though it is $949 on pricewatch.com (ouch). I honestly know zero about SATA. If it can support more than 2 devices per controller and those devices can all work at the same time, then it's got the main advantages of SCSI (for me anyway). I think I'll go read up on SATA, so that I can actually hold a discussion about it.

🙂

 

[Lonyo]

If it was going to come, it would take a while, and by that time people would be looking towards what comes after current HDD technologies (platters and moving bit), and towards other means of high capacity, fairly quick, data storage.
I think it's minimal unless peopl esuddenly drop prices, plus AVERAGE home users don't really NEED the extra speed and reliability and would prefer higher capacities for their money, and I doubt it would be possible for a SCSI drive to be as cheap as an IDE one under any circumstance, so that's one reason.

 

[FishTankX]

The bottomline is that SCSI isn't necescescary in the home desktop market for anything less than the power enthusiast.

That, and the kicker is that every SCSI drive, if i'm not mistaken, has an onboard controller and reliability/maintainence electronics. Which hikes the costs of each drive atleast 10 or 20$. Which in the drive market, makes alot of difference. You'll never see SCSI drives for new running less than 70$ will you? The majority of HD's put into computers today probably don't cost more than 70$ or so.

 

[Sunner]

One good argument for why it wont happen:
Why should it?

ATA-100/133 HD's are: cheap enough, fast enough, big enough, and reliable enough.

SCSI HD's are: expensive, partly due to supply/demand, and other such factors, but they are also more expensive to make, due to supperior motors and such, they are far faster than grandma needs, they have features that grandma doesn't need, but that still cost money, they are too small unless you wanna cough up really big bucks.

Basically ATA is good enough and SCSI is overkill for avarge users, and avarge users decide what the big OEM's make/demand.

 

[Budman]

What do you think: Will SCSI ever replace IDE on mainstream systems?

Nope because Serial ATA will beat scsi to it, IDE is going to slowly die.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Budman

What do you think: Will SCSI ever replace IDE on mainstream systems?

Nope because Serial ATA will beat scsi to it, IDE is going to slowly die.

SATA being a new form of ATA interface that is used to connect the IDE drives to the computer?

 

[sharkeeper]

Nope because Serial ATA will beat scsi to it, IDE is going to slowly die.

SATA drives will have identical mechanics as IDE. Basically the PATA interface will gradually migrate to SATA. Technically, IDE drives will always be around, just with a skinny cable. 🙂

SCSI drives were never really meant for mainstream use. Even before the days of IDE, most PC's had either a MFM or RLL based hard disk and controller. The controllers were usually add on peripherals often integrated with a floppy controller and many had two serial and one parallel port.

For servers, SCSI will always rule the roost. Perhaps in the future things may switch to serial attached SCSI which like above would be SCSI disks with skinny cables. 🙂

Cheers!

 

[downhiller80]

Odd question maybe, but why isn't IDE as fast as SCSI?

SCSI excels in access times - why? Surely mechanically the hard disks work in the same way, and most of your "access time" is the time it takes for the head to physically move across the disk. So why is SCSI so much faster?

 

[mechBgon]

Realistically, with more and more people wanting massive storage capacity to store media files, I don't think SCSI would ever overcome the price-per-Gb factor.

 

[Whitedog]

As long as there's a Porsche and a Volkswagon and the demand, the demand for SCSI and IDE will remain respectively... as it has for decades now.

Need I say more?

 

[Whitedog]

I want to say this too... IF SCSI were to replace IDE as the standard drive (in other words, if all HD's were SCSI), then SCSI drives would start getting "cheap" (not as in $$$ but as in Quality). There will ALWAYS be the "bargin" hard drives... and I DON'T WANT them to be SCSI.

I say leave things the way they are.

I like having the choice between a Porsche and a Volkswagon. 😉

 

[Hagen]

Check out the info on Serial ATA that I just read on the Seagate web http://www.seagate.com/products/discsales/discnew/index.html

The data rate of these in already 150mb/sec. and should double in the next year or so. I got a new ASUS P4S8X mobo which supports this, generation 1, 150mb/sec although I'm not gonna rush out and buy a new HD yet, the 120mb one is about 300cad or I guess around 200usd. It looks to me like that technology will take over soon, I also read that there are improvements coming to allow it to operate with networks and servers where it will support more multiple drives.
Cheers,
Hagen

 

[Whitedog]

The only difference in SATA and Standard IDE is the interface... the physical characteristics of the drive and the data storage are unchanged.

That's not the issue being discussed here.

Yes, we know SATA will eventually replace Standard IDE... but SCSI will not.

 

[Pariah]

SCSI will never replace ATA, because it isn't supposed to. ATA is for the consumer market which is cost driven. SCSI is for the enterprise market which is reliability and performance driven. You can't have both as the primary focus for a product. ATA is reliable enough and performs well enough for typical users who don't run servers or have mission critical data on their computers, while SCSI is cheap enough for businesses and power users to justify spending the extra for the benefits of better performance and reliability. Both fill their roll very well, so there is no reason for either to change.

SCSI excels in access times - why? Surely mechanically the hard disks work in the same way, and most of your "access time" is the time it takes for the head to physically move across the disk. So why is SCSI so much faster?

The faster rotational speeds of SCSI reduces latency. The smaller diameter platters of SCSI drives reduces the distance read heads have to travel and reduces average seek time. Also, SCSI drives are simply made better allowing faster read head movements also reducing seeks times. reduced latency + reduced seek time = reduced access time.

while SCSI capacities remain (comparitively) small compared to IDE (the largest I've seen was 70 some GB, are there larger

Current 10K SCSI drives top out at 144GB's.

 

[downhiller80]

So why don't IDE drives spin faster?

 

[Drewpy]

To spin something faster you a better motor. A motor which adds to productions costs. And a faster motor will create much more heat.

Kinetic Energy = mass * velocity ^2

Therefore all other things being equal, a 15000 RPM SCSI drive is consuming over 4 times the power of a 7200 RPM IDE drive.

Most consumer cases aren't designed with these kinds of thermal loads in mind. For the most part they are simply inadequate to cool even a couple SCSI drives. So everyone would need larger cases with more fans. The average Joe user doesn't want a large loud computer. He wants something to read his email, and frag some aliens without giving him a headache or taking up excessive space under his desk.

This is one of the reasons why IDE drives aren't spinning at the same speeds as SCSI.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: Drewpy
To spin something faster you a better motor. A motor which adds to productions costs. And a faster motor will create much more heat.

Kinetic Energy = mass * velocity ^2

Therefore all other things being equal, a 15000 RPM SCSI drive is consuming over 4 times the power of a 7200 RPM IDE drive.

Don't forget noise

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Drewpy
To spin something faster you a better motor. A motor which adds to productions costs. And a faster motor will create much more heat.

Kinetic Energy = mass * velocity ^2

Therefore all other things being equal, a 15000 RPM SCSI drive is consuming over 4 times the power of a 7200 RPM IDE drive.

Most consumer cases aren't designed with these kinds of thermal loads in mind. For the most part they are simply inadequate to cool even a couple SCSI drives. So everyone would need larger cases with more fans. The average Joe user doesn't want a large loud computer. He wants something to read his email, and frag some aliens without giving him a headache or taking up excessive space under his desk.

This is one of the reasons why IDE drives aren't spinning at the same speeds as SCSI.

Well, this isn't quite the case though, today's SCSI HD's use smaller platters, which allows them to spin faster, stay cooler, and lower service times.
It does however also mean they can fit less data on each platter, hence the lower sizes of SCSI HD's.
The current gen 15K drives use 18 GB platters, and 10K drives use 36 GB platters, while 7200 RPM IDE drives are moving to 80 GB platters.

 

[thorin]

If it can support more than 2 devices per controller

Yes.

and those devices can all work at the same time

Yes they can.

Nope because Serial ATA will beat scsi to it, IDE is going to slowly die.

and

Yes, we know SATA will eventually replace Standard IDE... but SCSI will not.

Whether the interface is SATA or ATA (Parallel ATA) the drives ARE STILL IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics).

The data rate of these in already 150mb/sec. and should double in the next year or so.

The Data rate for the INTERFACE is 150MB/Sec NOT the drives.

SCSI will never replace ATA, because it isn't supposed to.

EXACTLY! The answer can't get much more simple then that.

So why don't IDE drives spin faster?

The 10,000 rpm drives that were just announced aren't good enough for you? 😀

Thorin