On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 04:10:01PM +0800, Jun Tanamal wrote: > OFF-TOPIC: > I'm just wondering if the new IDE hard drives is considered reliable > than SCSI hard drives nowadays. Is it a good choice for using IDE hdd as > raid-type storage appliance? I hope my intention here doesn't start > 'popcorn' discussion. I just want to get more info before making a $$$ > decision.
Well IDE is kinda useless for any serious hardware RAID. The fact is, most machines come equipped with only two IDE interfaces, and it's a complicated matter to get more on board. Usually, off-board IDE chipsets are much much slower than their on-motherboard counterparts (for reasons that should be obvious), so performance suffers greatly. Hardware RAID support is also quite iffy on Linux, and some motherboard manufacturers have buggy BIOSes to support it. This is unlike SCSI where you can actually chain drives together on a bus so theoretically you can chain as many SCSI devices together as you want, (hopefully) without any significant loss in performance. As for reliability, SCSI and IDE should be roughly equivalent. The only problem with IDE is that it's an attempt to extend the lifetime of a very old hard drive controller specification (the old ST-506 spec) way beyond its limitations. I'd use SCSI if I had the money for it... -- Rafael R. Sevilla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +63(2) 8177746 ext. 8311 Programmer, Inter.Net Philippines +63(917) 4458925 http://dido.ph.inter.net/ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x5CDA17D8 Heute die Welt und Morgen das Sonnensystem! _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
