> In all honesty, I'd buy an AMD64 based ATA machine, and use software > raid to enhance performance. That's what I see as best value for a > grunty machine atm.
That's what I currently think too. > 1. The top end disks are re-jigged SCSI disks, and can act more > asynchronously given the right drivers ( getting further away from IDE > ), as Delio said. They also tend to spin faster - up to 15,000rpm. The only commonly sold SATA disks I see are 7200rpm, not having checked many suppliers. Would a 15000rpm SATA disk be cheaper than a 15000rpm SCSI one? > 3. Hardware raid is (allegedly) available. Same for PATA, and that's confirmed by users on either this or the Auckland list. You lose the price advantage though - decent PATA raid cards are $800 for 2 disks, >$1000 for 3 disks. Are equivalent SATA raid cards significantly cheaper? > I find the hot swap ability to be really useful Yes this is an advantage for a server (not a desktop). SCSI raid is also hot-swappable though - is the SATA solution cheaper? > Personally, I think that the bandwidth of firewire may well raise it's > head a bit more for major storage. Currently the bandwidth of firewire (500 or so Mbit/s) and USB2 (about the same) is for practical purposes identical. Do you have a firewire interface which is much faster than that? I'm talking practice here, not theory. How are you thinking of turning this into major storage? Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
