At 00:37 -0600 12/22/2002, Robyn Lyons wrote: >On Sunday, December 22, 2002, at 12:31 AM, Chuck wrote: > >> Will, >> I am surprised that the ATA pci card and IDE drive is better!!!! I >> thought >> SCSI is the way to go!!!
>If it makes you feel better, the newer SCSI interfaces are still faster >than ATA. What is that one, SCSI Ultra-wide?I always forget which SCSI >is which. SCSI Fast, SCSI wide, SCSI Fast-Wide Ultra Super Duty >Diesel......How about just 1,2,3,4. I hope that with FireWire they use >a better naming convention........ok, I'm done ranting. SCSI (no 'I' because there wasn't a II yet) 3 - 5 MB/s Unenhanced SCSI-II 5 MB/s Fast SCSI-II 10 MB/s Fast & Wide SCSI-II 20 MB/s Ultra SCSI 20 MB/s Ultra Wide SCSI 40 MB/s Low Voltage Differential (LVD) SCSI (AKA U2W) 80 MB/s (it's always wide) U160 SCSI 160 MB/s (Like LVD but twice as fast) U320 SCSI 320 MB/s Note that all the speeds are in Bytes per second. Firewire and USB speeds are typically in Bits (lower case b) per second, and so must be divided by 8 to get a meaningful number when doing comparisons. Also keep in mind that the very fastest hard drives available can only deliver about 40 (or are they up to 60 now?) MB/s of data. This is limited by how fast the platters spin and how quickly the heads can pull the data off the platters magnetically. So no matter how fast your electronic interface, a given drive isn't going to deliver more than 40 - 60 MB/s of data. And older drives are slower, sometimes much slower. This is why you're just as well off with an ATA-66 card or U2W SCSI as the faster more expensive stuff. If you use a striped RAID, the situation changes, as you then use more than one hard drive at a time to saturate your electronics, but for most users, you're never going to use the added performance (this computer generation) of interfaces faster than 60 - 80 MB/s. Jeff Walther -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
