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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!192.216.221.50!tandem!zorch!zorch.sf-bay.org!scott From: scott@zorch.sf-bay.org (Scott Hazen Mueller) Subject: Re: Several easy questions about FreeBSD, concerning hardware Reply-To: scott@zorch.sf-bay.org Sender: usenet@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Charlie Root) Organization: At Home; Salida, CA Message-ID: <E5xx1H.HzL@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> References: <33047E35.41C6@cs.ubc.ca> <5e80so$j6a$1@bofh.noc.best.net> X-Nntp-Posting-Host: localhost Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 06:36:53 GMT Lines: 26 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:35912 >>2) What kind of performance increase can I expect of your average >> SCSI drive over (shudder!) EIDE? The former is unfortunately a >> lot more expensive. >If it's just going to be a single-user machine, don't worry about >performance of a SCSI drive over EIDE, IMO. I disagree. I ran (E?)IDE drives for my first year-and-a-half, then switched to a single not-so-fast SCSI. It may be not-so-fast, but mine is still 3x faster on long sequential reads and just all-around perkier in general. If you run X and a bunch of stuff (Netscape is a particular pig, it basically has its own 16MB SIMM in my system) you're going to swap. If you swap, you'll be happiest if you swap off of a SCSI drive. That said, SCSI also gives you - so I am told - better options for tape drives, to back up all that data. Lastly, one of the reasons to do UNIX is to have all kinds of background stuff cooking along. Having your foreground tasks slow down because of IDE overhead takes some of the fun out of running mailing lists and newsfeeds. -- Scott Hazen Mueller | scott@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG or tandem!zorch!scott Boycott Internet Spam: See <URL:http://www.vix.com/spam/>.