What's the difference between EIDE and SCSI?

NakaNaka

Diamond Member
Aug 29, 2000
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What's the difference between these types of HD's and how do I find out which kind my computer has??

Thanks.
 

Athlon4all

Diamond Member
Jun 18, 2001
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2 very different interfaces. I'll go over both.

(E)IDE is mainstream, it is used in allmost every Desktop PC today. It is a very good performer for it's price in non-RAID and 2-drive RAID configurations. It supports 2 devices per channel (Master and Slave), most mobo's have 2 channels (RAID mobo's have 4). SCSI is higher performing than IDE in both Non-RAID and RAID configurations, but is very expensive, like a 40GB SCSI drive costs at least $200, IDE 40GB for $120. It supports more than just drives, there are SCSI Scanners, Hard Drives, CD-ROM's, CD-RW's. And SCSI has much lower seeking times with 10000 RPM drives (And 1 drive even has 15000 RPM's). For performance and in RAID configuration's SCSI is the only way to go, but for Price/Performance IDE is very good. But IMHO, with Disk performance being the limiting factor in all applications except for Gaming I think that SCSI is very much worth it's price. Now to find out weather your PC has SCSI, well it most likely uses IDE or u'd know it had SCSi, but to check look in System Properties for a SCSI adapter. It there is none, then it's IDE.