SCSI Drives

[Guest]

I am in the process of ordering a new computer. Is anyone using a SCSI drive for flight sim (36GB 15,000RPM Ultra 160 SCSI. I was wondering if the speed was worth the cost. The second drive is 100GB Western Digital, with of 1GB memory and the ATI Radeon 9700 pro 128 MB AGP dual monitor along with the other stuff to make it scream.

[Guest]

I am using FS2002 on a 9G partition on an 18G Atlas Ultra 160 SCSI drive. I've used SCSI for film scanning and time-coded audio CD burning since CD burners first appeared on the scene and don't have an IDE drive on my system.As I've not used FS2002 on an IDE drive I can't really compare. But I can say I don't detect any stutters/hesitation at all due to the HDD. Data transfer is v. fast.I've recently assembled computers for my kids and must say I'm impressed with the speed of new IDE drives - I think it likely that the extra cost of SCSI may be better directed to a faster processor, better video card, or more or faster RAM, but I'm not completely sure.However, if you do go down the SCSI path, I think you'll be pleased.David HicksYSTW (not Guantanamo Bay)

[ABE 0]

I've been using SCSI drives ever since I owned an ATARI many many years ago. Needless to say I stayed with something that worked great for me.Although the IDE drives nowadays are impressive and are very close in speed with SCSI, the latter offers so many uses that Ide drives don't, or are cumbersome to implement.With Scsi, I can boot up from any drive, I have 4, chain them together very easily and have never experienced any delay in FS2002, burning CD's or DVD's. I suppose you can possibly do the same with IDE, but for me, I stick with my first love.Abe

[Ian Mitchell 0]

Yes I have 2 18gb 15,000 rpm IBM drives connected as RAID 0 via an Adapatec SCSI Raid controller.I never have hesitations that I can attribute to the disks. It is very quick to start FS2002 even with 1 Gb of add-on scenery. I have very fast disk performance. Whether I could get similar from todays IDE with/without RAID, I don't know - possibly.CheersIan

[Guest JonP01]

rkhjh,In my opinion, so long as you have an optimally setup IDE subsystem, you will not notice any benefit from going to SCSI. I would not have said that 12 months ago, but now that IDE drives have such high data density and capacity, I really feel the SCSI advantage is only going to be felt in a server rather than desktop environment.There are a few things you can do to ensure your IDE setup is optimal. One thing you can do is partition off your FS2002 installation onto the outer most cylinders of your hard drive. For example, I have a 2 GB partition on the outer most cylinders of my drive just for running FS2002. By doing this, I ensure the fastest possible I/O rates as well as very fast access times. Bear in mind that whilst on paper SCSI usually has faster I/O rates and access times, this is offset to a large extent by the superior data density of the latest IDE drives. So if you go and buy a high capacity IDE drive such as 120GB, you are not going to take up much physical area on the disk platters in comparison to a 36Gb SCSI drive (given the same size FS2002 installation). Therefore, the read heads on the IDE drive have less distance to move, thereby negating to some extent - if not totally from a practical viewpoint - the superior access times of SCSI.There has been agruments that the lower CPU utilization SCSI is favourable, but I don't believe that is the case anymore from a practical viewpoint. Maybe in times gone by, but not nowadays with such fast processors. It's a similar thing with soundcards. If you have a current AMD or Intel processor, you are not going to notice the difference between a soundcard that benchmarks 10% utilization versus one that has 2% utilization. Apart from that, the lower CPU utilization scores of SCSI is offset by the higher use of system resources compared to IDE.At www.storagereview.com, they go into depth regarding the pros and cons of SCSI versus IDE. There is a couple of hours reading material there, but if you digest it I doubt you will come away wanting to spend the extra money on SCSI. The money you save on SCSI can be spend on a better CPU, better graphics card and higher quality RAM that you can push to more agressive settings - and you would STILL have change in your pocket.And for the record, on my IDE drive setup, I would not even be aware that my system was even running a hard drive once FS2002 was loaded up.

[Guest]

Thanks for the imformation. I'll digest all of this and make my decision.