which interface transfers data faster? USB or SCSI-2?

[kru]

trying to decide whether to get a USB or a SCSI zip drive for use with my laptop. my friend has a spare zip plus drive he's willing to let me have, and i can pick up a SCSI-2 pc card for roughly the same price as a USB zip drive. i'm curious to know which of the two standards transfers data faster (and if there's even a noticeable difference between the two). another consideration is that the USB zip drive would be hot swappable, but i only have a single USB port on the laptop (Inspiron 5000), so it might be more convenient to use a removable drive that doesn't plug into that port.

input, anyone?

 

[Degenerate]

SCSI faster
much faster
USB = scanners and mouse and stuff

 

[Degenerate]

actually usb maybe sufficient cause i just remembered zipdrive = slow transfer
but scsi should be faseter

 

[Rand]

SCSI 2 is MUCH faster then USB 1.1

 

[jmcoreymv]

Yes SCSI-2 is much faster than USB 1.1 however I doubt the Zipdrive can fully saturate the USB bus.

 

[Crimson]

Yes, SCSI is MUCH faster.. MUCH MUCH faster.. USB is about 1.5 megabytes per second and SCSI-2 is around 10 megabytes per second.. Ultra 160 SCSI drives are 160 megabytes per second.. For scanners and zip drives however USB would be fine..

 

[kru]

here are the specs on the pc card:

APA-1450A PC Card

Fast : 2 MB/sec host bus data transfers; up to 10MB/sec synchronous SCSI bus transfers

i read somewhere that this card is comparable to an ISA scsi card so i was wondering if it really transfers data faster than USB.

 

[Vincent]

Look on the Iomega website to see what the transfer rate for the USB and SCSI drives is. Even if the theoretical maximum transfer rate for SCSI2 is faster than USB, it won't make any difference if the ZIP drive can't provide data fast enough.

It is easy enough to get a USB hub if you need to use additional USB devices, although you should make sure to get a powered hub.

I would go for the USB ZIP drive since most modern computers have USB ports and thus you would be able to use the drive on many different computers.

 

[kru]

Specs on the SCSI zip drive from iomega's site:

Sustained transfer rate:
Maximum: 2.4 MB/sec

 

[Sir Fredrick]

CPU utilization is also lower with SCSI