From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 26 18:20:54 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4DA71065672 for ; Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:20:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from mail.potentialtech.com (internet.potentialtech.com [66.167.251.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6FE358FC1E for ; Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:20:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from vanquish.ws.pitbpa0.priv.collaborativefusion.com (pr40.pitbpa0.pub.collaborativefusion.com [206.210.89.202]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.potentialtech.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5B308EBC08; Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:20:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:19:41 -0400 From: Bill Moran To: prad Message-Id: <20080626141941.b0000445.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20080626092558.1a17d7d2@gom.home> References: <20080626092558.1a17d7d2@gom.home> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.8 (GTK+ 2.12.9; i386-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: to scsi or not to scsi X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:20:54 -0000 In response to prad : > i've heard scsi hard drives are really good. > i've also seen at least one site which claims that ide easily > outperform scsi. > > for the server we got (dual P3 1GHz 2M which will use raid), is one > preferable over the other? and what about sata? There was a time when SCSI drives were unarguably higher quality than IDE drives. It's unclear whether or not that's true anymore. It seems as if even the lower quality drives have enough lifespan that they live longer than anyone cares to keep them. Also, SATA seems to be positioning itself as high quality too. Anyone who really cares about their data makes good backups and has RAID for redundancy. Whether or not they go with SCSI or SATA seems to be a matter of personal preference any more. If you're worried about performance, you have to look at each drive individually. Look at seek times and throughput and so forth. keep in mind that the published speeds are usually the _interface_ speed, and there's no guarantee that the drive itself can actually read/write data at that speed. You also have to consider the interface. If you need a high-performance RAID controller with battery-backed cache, it might only be available for SCSI. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com