[Hudlug] SCSI drives vs EIDE for Crimbo

[Tim Bray]

Shak wrote:
 >
 > Thanks for your kind offer, however I do not think that the air
 > circulation around my hard disks can be the error. This is because I
 > am running my system in a way that I have 2 fans taking the air in at
 > the front, two at the back taking it out, and then two on the hard
 > disks themselves. I have some spare fans and Ill take my drives out
 > of the caddies and see if they run any more effectively.
 >

Um, sounds like a symptom of too many fans if you ask me. :)

To your original problem. Rounded cables won't fix the problem because 
they are rounded.

Sounds to me like you could have a faulty drive, controller or cable 
somewhere.

Although, IDE systems do go very slowly when copying large amounts of 
data.  And if you are using the CD writer as well at the same time ....
(and is this on windows or linux ?)


Back to the IDE v SCSI argument.  SCSI was actually designed to go fast 
and to support very large disks, whereas IDE has just been bodged along 
a bit further. Or that is my feeling.

SCSI certainly uses less CPU for IO operations.

I'm not sure.  When I have the cash to build a new machine, then I shall 
be buying the fastest SCSI disks and controller I can get.  Because it 
is certainly true that the disk is the slowest bit in the modern PC.

SCSI is definately faster (and a lot more so if you have to put a lot of 
disks in 1 machine), but whether the faster is worth the extra money is 
a decision based on circumstances.

I always used to like the old Sun kit with the piles of SCSI external 
drives.

One thing I am wary of though is hardware raid controllers.  If you lose 
the controller (rather than a disk) then where do you buy the exact same 
controller from to get your data back?

Onto drive failures.  In the last year I so, I have replaced 4 dead 
Maxtors and 1 dead fujitsu.  All died within 2 years of being bought.
I've never had a Seagate die on me, but they are noisey.

[I've also just noticed that I have 4 fujitsu drives running here. ]


Does anybody have any DDS2 DAT tapes?  These are the 2/4 Gig size.


Tim