[mikellanes]

I currently have 2 80GB ATA100 Drives, I was thinking of getting a new ATA100 Controller Card (from sonnet tech.)

Or I was going to sell the drives to a friend who is looking to buy some storage and get a nice SCSI setup

How fast is SCSI (I guess Ultra SCSI 2?) compared to ATA100?

Where can i get comparasons/information on the bus speeds

Thanks for any insight

[GetSome681]

Well, even with ATA-100, you aren't going to get those transfer rates. That's all it is, is just what the connection is capable of transferring. Unfortunately, the speed is limited by the hard drive itself, ie spin speeds, and such. With most IDE hard drives, the best you can get is a 7200 rpm drive. Then you'll want to look at read, write, and transfer rates, as those can vary a little from drive to drive.

SCSI (ie Ultra and such) connections are capable of high transfer rates as well...something like 160 mb/sec for some. However, the drives don't reach these speeds, as again the transfer is regulated by the drive itself. However, with scsi drives, the spindles spin much faster, as 10k is pretty much a norm today, and you can even get 15k drives at a price. The higher spinning means a faster drive. Also, and I'm not sure this is true or not, but with SCSI hard drives, the things that read from the platters can move independently, whereas on the IDE drives, they move in unison. This independent motion allows for quicker reading.

Also, and I'm not 100% on this either, but IDE is usually controlled by the CPU ( you mentioned geting a controller, so this might not be the case), which means that some of your cpu goes to controlling the hard drives. With SCSI, the card does most of the controlling, and therefore leaves more of your cpu (albeit a small fraction) for you to use for your tasks, and not for reading off the hard drive.

Everything I said might not be 100% accurate, but the basic jist of it is correct. I current have an IBM 60 GXP I think it's called, and I want to sell it, and go scsi, especially for my OS X drive, since access times are of great importance. Go with at least a 10k scsi drive, and if you can afford the 15k drive..GET IT!!!

[GetSome681]

Ooops..forgot one thing..
http://www.storagereview.com/


this place is pimp..they have a huge site..it will take a while to browse through everything they have..but it's very very complete and good.

Good luck..

[CubieDubbie]

Originally posted by mikellanes:
<STRONG>I currently have 2 80GB ATA100 Drives, I was thinking of getting a new ATA100 Controller Card (from sonnet tech.)

Or I was going to sell the drives to a friend who is looking to buy some storage and get a nice SCSI setup

How fast is SCSI (I guess Ultra SCSI 2?) compared to ATA100?

Where can i get comparasons/information on the bus speeds

Thanks for any insight </STRONG>

The ATA100 drives with an ATA100 controller would be very nice but, I am sure the scsi drives with a nice scsi controller might be faster and better if thats what you need or are looking for. Be sure and get a scsi controller that works with OSX if thats what you are going to use. I have 4 ATA66 drives in my 867. Definitely slower but, I opted for other things I personally needed so they end up working fine for me. I did look into and at several scsi drives but, anything in a size that I would be satisfied with where way too expensive for my tastes. And add to that the price of a scsi controller and I was way over any budget plans I might have been thinking about. I went to my local dealer and I believe he told me that a 9 gig. scsi drive was something above $300.00. Gee's I think thats a little bit small for my tastes. I believe though you have two very nice drives there in the 80 gig. ATA100 catagory. May I inquire as to what you paid for them?????????

[mikellanes]

I paid $132 a piece they were on sale and i hade a $50 coupon for each (at staples) they are the new diamond max series drives... 7500rpm.. etc

well i think ill just stick with the ones i have, question remaining, should I get the ATA100 controller or just stick with the internal ATA66 bus?

im doing some iDVD editing & pulling in some DV from a deck and get some dropped frames currently... no big deal but will a ATA100 controller help out any?

thanks for the time [/LIST]

[CubieDubbie]

Originally posted by mikellanes:
<STRONG>I currently have 2 80GB ATA100 Drives, I was thinking of getting a new ATA100 Controller Card (from sonnet tech.)

Or I was going to sell the drives to a friend who is looking to buy some storage and get a nice SCSI setup

How fast is SCSI (I guess Ultra SCSI 2?) compared to ATA100?

Where can i get comparasons/information on the bus speeds

Thanks for any insight </STRONG>

Well I admit since they are rather new to me anyway, I am not as up on them as I would like to be. But, I would assume and please I do use the word assume here that if they are faster overall in a PC with an ATA100 controller; then they should be about the same way in a Mac. Should be. If the ATA/100 controller is not a whole lot of money, why not give it a try and see what happens. I have 7200 rpm drives in mine and I have not really had any trouble doing video editing. Or none that I can say I have seen anyway.

On the scsi side for a moment, I still am amased that scsi drives command such high prices!!!!! The darn things have been out for years, and yet they never seem to come down to earth as far as prices are concerned. Imagine a 9 gig. scsi for something over $300.00!!!!!! Unbelieveable!!!!!!! I wonder what the real big ones cost?????????

[Paul S]

No need for the ATA100 controller. It is a faster bus yes, but it's mostly marketing that they are included, since they make no real difference. ATA66 has a theoretical limit of 66MB/s, and ATA100 is 100MB/s. Most 7200rpm IDE drives sustain 35MB/s and peak at 45MB/s, well within the range of ATA66.

With 2 drives set as master and slave, you may see a small performance difference if they are both working at the same time, assuming they are both working so hard they reach their peak. Bear in mind that DV only requires about 4MB/s, so that isn't taxing your system too much. Only when copying files from one drive to the next will you really see a difference.

The only reason to get the ATA100 controller is if you want to add more drives. You will get virtually no performance difference on your existing drives.