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Re: O.T. Computers


--- Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net> wrote:
> SoundFNR@aol.com wrote:

> > SCSI disks are supposed to be the best, but now the
> > IDE disks are easily good enough, and are cheaper
> > and more importantly quieter.

> Is this really true?  Are SCSI disks louder?

No. SCSI and EIDE disks use the same HDA assembly, just a different
interface card. It's the HDA that contributes the mechanical noise, so
the same drive should have the same noise level regardless of what
interface it's hung on. 

That said, perhaps the drive is able to work faster on a SCSI bus
because it's not waiting around for the CPU of the system to respond to
IDE commands. That's the big performance advantage of SCSI, the
controller is more intelligent so it requires less of your CPU
(drivers, etc) to manage the interface. That means everything on your
system runs faster, even if the I/Os themselves are going the same
speed. 

Besides, nobody's making 10k or 15k RPM IDE drives yet.

I have a friend that built up a DAW not long ago. It's got a 1GHz PIII
processor and a 36GB 10k Ultra160 SCSI drive for audio (a seperate
slower SCSI boot drive on a different interface), running Cubase. The
"system analysis" application said he could get something like 160
tracks on this system. He tested it by ripping a bunch of CDs (so the
audio tracks were different) and playing them back at the same time. I
think he went to 75 tracks before he got tired of copying CDs. Then he
started adding plug-ins on top of it. I don't remember how much he was
able to use, but it was very very impressive. You couldn't do that with
an IDE setup. 

ATA100 is a fairly fast interface, but it still has to steal CPU cycles
to do management stuff that a SCSI host adapter does for you. Plus, if
you have another disk on the bus, it shares the bandwidth in a
performance-unfriendly manner. Sure, it's probably "good enough" for
most people's audio needs, and it's certainly cheaper for more space,
but if you want maximum performance, SCSI is better.

Greg


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