I have to agree with everything Peter says, but my conclusions are a little
different, but not necessarily better :)
After poking briefly through Seagate's site, your SCSI drive is probably
between 15% and 30% slower than a new Ultra ATA/100 60GB drive, when doing
sustained, sequential reads. Neither drive can max out its own interface,
the Seagate ATA does 44 to 70 megabytes (which I assume is typical for any
large ATA, the smaller sized drives were much slower), the Seagate SCSI does
anywhere from 30 to 58 depending on what model you have. These are peak
performance numbers, and assume the data is on the optimum position on the
disk. They just can't spin fast enough at 7200 rpm to fill the bandwidth.
That said, there are still some competitive differences. SCSI almost always
has more cache. SCSI for some reason always has faster random access. SCSI
is capable of handling more read and write requests per unit of time, and
depends less on the cpu. SCSI handles multiple devices nimbly, very nice if
you have a SCSI cd or dvd burner.
So, they each have unique qualifications. I would guess that the system
would look good on the ATA, and data, especially the windows swap file, and
any other data that you access randomly would do nicely on the SCSI. I
would like to see the proof from a couple tests, but this would be my guess.
It maybe that Peter's conclusions are better.
Tom Turak
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Shkabara [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 6:13 PM
I have used both. From a performance standpoint, the SCSI drives are
probably better, but in practice, you will probably not notice a difference.
However, on most systems, it is easier to boot from an IDE drive than SCSI.
The choice is yours, but I would probably boot from SCSI just because it
SHOULD be the better performer :) .
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 2:57 AM
I have 2 choices of drive, they are both 7200RPM, both Seagate but that's
where the similarities stop. I use an Adaptec Ultra2 SCSI controller (4+
years old at this stage) and 36GB Ultra2 SCSI drive, and in the past this
combination has worked well but not necessarily mind-blowing in terms of
performance.
I've recently purchased an Ultra ATA/100 60GB drive and I just wondered if
this would be the better option to install my OS on from a performance
perspective and have the SCSI as a secondary drive? This is not a server it
will be a stand-alone system.
Jerry O'Connell.
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