Question

Does a 18GB SCSI Hard Drive coupled w/ a 6GB IDE allow better multitasking on internet than if using 2 IDE drives?

Asked by: prende

     Does a 18GB scsi Hard Drive coupled w/ a 6GB IDE allow for better multitasking on the internet than if using 2 IDE drives;
  => the 6GB IDE & an Ultra DMA/33 or 66 of 30GB?
    ***     Details: I have a 350 Mhz Dell Optiplex; w/ 6GB Maxtor IDE drive; & 64 Megs of RAM; using W98. My current installation of W98 is gummed up, but slugs along; I must get backup to reinstall.
   => I want to add a hard drive for backup, more storage, more stability & speed.
   => I seek the best option to configure a dual boot of  W98 & Linux; probably Caldera Linux on the 2nd hard drive.
   =>  I also seek to eventually incorporate a SCSI CD-RW Burner, possibly external (If a good idea).
   =>  My primary use for SCSI would be for multitasking on the internet; mostly downloading.
     ** Given the above;
Does it make techical/economic sense to pay 2x as much for a 18GB SCSI than for a 30GB Ultra DMA; for added speed & stability ?    
                I am no expert.    
                    Thanks, Prende

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Asked On
2000-12-16 at 13:03:21ID20006845
Topic

General Computer Systems

Participating Experts
9
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: HDWILKINSPosted on 2000-12-16 at 22:10:25ID: 25830

I would say no.  I think you would get more bang for your buck by adding memory.  That way you won't be swaping to disk as much.

HW

 

by: StormMajikPosted on 2000-12-23 at 15:18:56ID: 43383

A good question - I would love to have a SCSI based system as it has a few advanatages. I can plug in more drives, upto 15 at last count where as IDE is limited to four (unless you have two controllers which would be eight). I think the throughput is better than IDE to you should be in for a smoother ride with Windows/Linux. IDE is a little stop start. The current SCSI adaptors are real fast - beating the more humble IDE drives, even in UDMA modes

But the thing is the cost is a killer. Not only are you buying an expensive drive, you need the adapter card and the cables/termination too.

Unless you need a server like system with large drive space. Or a system more dedicated to CD duplication the cost of installing the complete SCSI system would not make economic sense.

If you want a SCSI CD Writer this is ok as you can get a (cheap) single device adaptor for it - or even with it in some bundles. Anything that seperates the source data channel from the destination does well for copying performance and reliability. However the dual channel of IDE does this quite well.

I dont think the SCSI/IDE issue really affects the Internet perfromance - its really overall system performance and this can be acheived with either. Get a new fast drive with plenty of space. Put your swap file on it (virtual memory) and you should see a peformance increase. I would suggest 128Mb of RAM as the Internet software creates several processes ( along with the rest of Windows/Linux)and more memory will aid this.

Linux would love a SCSI system and if you are doing more than desktop stuff with it this maybe the way to go. If you are 'playing' with Linux stick with IDE.

In short with what you have told us, I would buy an IDE drive and upgrade to 128MB of RAM. Only if you have money to burn set yourself up with a good 160 SCSI adaptor and hard drive.

Storm :-)

 

by: redmustangPosted on 2000-12-31 at 11:33:05ID: 61486

If you are looking for a good backup solution, try using a RAID controller.  A decent RAID controller will cost nowhere near as much as a SCSI contoller.  With a RAID Level 5 controller, the hard drives will be mirrored on the fly. And, if one drive goes down, the other hard drive will take over and the whole process will be transparent to the user.  And, once you replace the defective drive, it will automatically rebuild itself.

As far as the SCSI CD-RW, I would agree with StormMajik.  Unless your doing dedicated CD duplication, an IDE internal or an external USB will do quite fine without the sometimes unjustifiable cost of SCSI.

 

by: hardware123Posted on 2001-01-31 at 05:00:09ID: 202644

I agree with above comments. For IDE, want both speed and stability, use RAID 0+1 ; for SCSI, use RAID 5

 

by: RoadWarriorPosted on 2001-03-02 at 21:00:45ID: 5896702

The primary factor in your internet performance on anything better than about 200Mhz CPU with 64Mb RAM, unless you are running a webserver, will be the speed of your internet connection. If you are doing this through a 56k modem, or ISDN, or even DSL, or cable then even last generation IDE drives will be up to the "strain". It will slightly improve system performance if however you are dowloading to a drive other than your system drive, if that drive is on either a seperate IDE channel or on a SCSI bus. Anything with a faster transfer speed than 1mb a second will keep up with most internet connections for long downloads.

Even for a webserver, it's not really transfer speed that will be the limiting factor, but access time, in this case, you want to move large numbers of small files quickly, the system has to get at them quickly, so buying a drive with a really fast access time will be of the most benefit here. However, if this is an active online database, then transfer speed may be a consideration too.

As the others say, Linux will fly with SCSI and it is a good choice for an external CDRW.

Currently it appears that there are no IDE drives that can match the access times of 10,000 RPM SCSI drives which are heading into the sub 6ms region, whereas 8ms is good for IDE. As I say though, you won't really notice this for long downloads, but you would to serve files.

regards,

Road Warrior

 

by: dogztarPosted on 2001-06-27 at 13:47:29ID: 6233056

prende:
Any update on your decision?  Please choose a comment to accept as an answer, as this question is extremely old.

Thanks!

-d

 

by: svdammePosted on 2001-09-06 at 09:33:24ID: 6461386

SCSI is great if you are a pro and really need the power ( video processing , DTP , huge amounts of data)

these days with UATA the access speeds of IDE disks have improved lot's so with smaller files the advantages of scsi isn't that big any more...

just get a new IDE disk , use it as your boot disk and put the older disk on the second channel as master and your cdrom as slave on the second channel

use the old disk for temp files / swap files and backup

comment on redmustang >>> RAID is not a backup method !!!
RAID will not allow restoring if your system get's infected ,if you delete something or if the building burns up !!!

 

by: EricWestboPosted on 2002-06-06 at 06:53:46ID: 7059295

** PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT THIS COMMENT AS AN ANSWER **

It appears that this question has been abandoned.  Please take a moment to finalize the question & reward your points as appropriate.  If this question is not finalized within 7 days, Community Support will be requested to force close it.  Unless there is objection or further activity,  it will also be requested that points be awarded to the following expert(s) for their comments:

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If you feel that your question was not properly addressed, or that none of the comments received were appropriate answers, please post a request in Community support (with a link to this page) to refund your points.  The link to the Community Support area is: http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/qList.jsp?ta=commspt


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by: MoondancerPosted on 2002-06-07 at 06:30:42ID: 7061970

Thanks for your help, Eric.

Points have been split.
Points for roadwarrior -> http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/qShow.jsp?qid=20309019
Monitoring for comments, and finalized by

Moondancer - EE Moderator

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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