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From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
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: 30 Jan 1997 20:06:24 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <5cqv00$mdv@web.nmti.com>
References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5c8a39$7tn@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> <5c8u2s$o3e@panix2.panix.com> <5coi5k$20oi@usenet1y.prodigy.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sonic.nmti.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:155237 comp.os.linux.setup:94680 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5808 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2147
In article <5coi5k$20oi@usenet1y.prodigy.net>,
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> wrote:
> 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.
Perhaps, in a perfect world. In practice the price difference is applied
to marketing, for commodity equipment (your Packard Bells and Gateway 2000s).
For a home computer, the extra cost in terms of complexity in adding *any*
additional components (tape, a second drive, and so on) makes the fifty
or hundred buck price savings for IDE irrelevant.
For an office computer, you're buying the ability to plug in an extra drive
or tape without cracking the case and installing new drivers, which saves
half a days work, and that costs 2 people (the guy installing and the guy
who can't use the computer because it's down) for over a hundred bucks an
hour in lost productivity.
> Only when
> disk performance is the only bottleneck does it make sense to spend
> money on SCSI.
In today's environment, performance of just about any computer is more
than adequate. The biggest marginal costs are cracking cases and plugging
boards.
--
The Reverend Peter da Silva, ULC, COQO, BOFH.
Har du kramat din varg, idag? `-_-'