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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!news.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-feed4.bbnplanet.com!sonysjc!sonybc!newsjunkie.ans.net!newsfeeds.ans.net!prodigy.com!darkstar.prodigy.com!davidsen From: davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: IDE vs SCSI (was Re: Linux vs BSD) Date: 29 Jan 1997 22:15:16 GMT Organization: TMR Associates, Schenectady NY Lines: 24 Message-ID: <5coi5k$20oi@usenet1y.prodigy.net> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <87k9p4rckd.fsf_-_@murkwood.gaffaneys.com> <5c8a39$7tn@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> <5c8u2s$o3e@panix2.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: darkstar.prodigy.com Originator: davidsen@darkstar.prodigy.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:155116 comp.os.linux.setup:94577 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5797 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2125 In article <5c8u2s$o3e@panix2.panix.com>, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote: | A good SCSI host adapter like a BusLogic MultiMaster or an Adaptec 2940 can | sustain quite a bit more I/O throughput with much less CPU overhead than | Intel's busmastering IDE controllers can. Of course, there's not any real | reason you couldn't build a reasonable IDE controller (In fact, Dell used | to build a RAID array of IDE disks that looked like an Adaptec 1540, IIRC) | but what you're using isn't any such. The very low prices of reasonable performance IDE drives make SCSI a bad investment for most applications. The price diference can be applied to memory, cpu, or some other part of the system. Only when disk performance is the only bottleneck does it make sense to spend money on SCSI. Such a controller would be very useful. Using more drives spreads head motion, allows higher aggregate transfer rates, and larger total capacity. You can't get there with IDE. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com) Windows NT is like a doctoral thesis; it contains a wealth of interesting features and ideas, some of which could be extracted from the proof of concept and used in a real operating system.