[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Joe Hermosa) writes:
>
> I have a Power Macintosh 7300/200. I want to add a larger hard drive. The
> one I have is two gigs. Most people talk about using a scsi and they usually
> recommend a Seagate Barracuda. But today I was reading about somebody
> wanting to upgrade a 7600/200 and he said he wanted to get a ide pci card
> to go with another type of hard drive because it would be faster than the
> slow scsi. What is this all about? Also, can I do this to my 7300/200
> computer and if so, is this a more difficult process than installing the
> scsi. Is there any advantage to using the ide pci card with hard drive.
> Is it really faster? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.
I guess the question you have to ask yourself is do you want more disk space,
faster disk access, or both? And how much are you willing to pay?
Disk transfer speed is generally constrained by two things: the speed of the
hard drive and the speed of the bus connecting the hard drive to the computer.
With a 7600 (or a 7300), you have an internal narrow SCSI bus capable of 10
MB/s maximum transfer rate. If you're running with the original OEM 2 GB
drives, they're probably able to deliver about 4-5 MB/s on a good day. SCSI
busses now go up to 160 MB/s and IDE/ATA busses go up to 100 MB/s; however,
both technologies outstrip current hard drive performance as a single drive
can only deliver data in the 20-30 MB/s range.
The bus and hard drive(s) in your PowerMac are *old* (in computer years,
they're ancient :) ). Just about any SCSI or IDE hard drives or busses you can
buy today will be faster than what you have now. Just replacing your existing
drive(s) with new Barracuda(s) will get you some improvement; though you'll
still not get more than the 10 MB/s that the internal SCSI bus can deliver.
Finally, IDE is a lot cheaper than SCSI. IDE drives are going for about $3-5
per gigabyte; SCSI drives are $10/GB and up (these are ballpark retail prices,
if you shop the sales you can do better). This means it may be possible for
you to buy an IDE controller PCI card and IDE hard drive for less money than
what a SCSI drive might cost.
Hope this helps,
-Jeff [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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