VanLUG Email Archive
>
> So the question comes up: what interface should the main disk(s) use?
> Is SCSI still sufficiently better than EIDE to justify the extra price
> of the drives? Do UDMA drives actually get decent transfer rates,
> comparable to SCSI, these days? Is it actually better to have the disk
> on an EIDE controller to balance load between it and the SCSI controller?
>
Well I guess it depends on whether you are a statistics/numbers/performace
freak... :) I find that today's systems have sufficient performance that I
don't notice the difference in daily use... There are of course some
applications where it becomes more noticeable. So I think it depends on
your expected use of the system.
I myself prefer SCSI (my Linux server is exclusively SCSI; but the family
windoze box is UDMA EIDE and does just fine. But because of heavy use of
multimedia applications & performance issues with the O/S, I wouldn't mind
more CPU :)
> Is there any problem booting Windows or Linux on a SCSI-only system with
> no EIDE disk? How about mixed EIDE and SCSI - can you boot from either?
>
On most recent BIOSes, you can set the boot order; the Award BIOS (very
common) has support for the NCR SCSI (Symbios) chips, so you can use the
inexpensive 53C810 based cards (which don't usually have their own BIOS
extensions) and get very good performance. I notice many of the stores are
now carrying the Tekram cards (NCR based) for very reasonable prices.
> A similar question for the CD-ROM (assume it'sinternal): should it be
> EIDE/ATAPI (cheap) or SCSI?
>
Again, depends on application. For most use ATAPI is more than adequate.
Hope this helps!
Regards!
Ken