Re: Dumb question: Which is "better" SCSI or IDE disks?

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Sat, 5 Dec 1998 18:40:12 +0000 (GMT)

> 1. Some hard disk manufactures are using same disk drive (physically) to
> make SCSI and ATA. They only change the PCB board.
>
> 2. SCSI-1 and SCSI-2 have 8 bit data bus, while ATA have 16 bit data bus.
>
> 3. ATA got disk cache built in as well.
>
> 4. Some low end of SCSI host card is only 8 Bit card.
>
> Compare by yourself.

I have done several times. On my Cyrix MII box the IDE drive wins on bulk
data (ie hdparm tests). It seems to be slightly lower CPU load than the
SCSI controller too. When it comes to doing real work building a kernel
with /usr/src on SCSI is about 20% faster than on IDE - this is a 5400rpm
IBM scsi drive (DCAS-34330) on a buslogic 946 (ie fast not even ultra
scsi) and narrow not wide.

Most of my drives are still IDE, because I don't build kernels on them all..

Alan

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