[plug] SCSI Advantage?

[Matt Kemner]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Scott Campbell wrote:

> Taking this into account why is it that SCSI is seen as better for burning?

Because the IDE drivers under win9x suck.
 
> The way i understand it, SCSI takes the load of the cpu when accessing
> disks? so giving better performance because the controller does the work and
> it frees up the CPU.

That used to be the case, but with the newest linux IDE drivers there
really is not much difference in CPU overhead between IDE and SCSI.

> But When burning a CD its best not to do anything else because u run the
> risk of making a coatser for whatever reason.

Again, this is the case under Windows, not Linux.  I regularly burn CDs
while continuing with whatever I was doing before, including things that
make Windows users cringe, like firing up Netscape.

This is on a Celeron 466 based system, identical to one my ex-boss had
running Win98SE, and in order for him to be able to go disc->disc he had
to purchase a SCSI CD writer, a SCSI CD-ROM (which cost almost as much as
the writer) and 2 SCSI cards.  He had to buy the second SCSI card because
when hanging both devices off one SCSI card he kept burning coasters.

> So if you have a computer just doing burning, and nothing else at one time,
> and the burners are the same speed, what is the difference between SCSI and
> IDE?

As Jason pointed out, you can hang more devices off a SCSI chain, so if
you have, or are planning to get things like a SCSI scanner, zip drive, or
whatever and the price between IDE and SCSI CDRW's are similar enough,
you might choose to go SCSI.  If you have enough spare IDE slots, or you
don't already have a SCSI card and don't expect to need one in the near
future, you may as well go IDE.  Remember add-on IDE ports are around the
same price as add-on SCSI cards, but they will only hold 4 extra devices
as opposed to 7 (or 15)

Also, the Linux IDE guy is apparently working on a driver that will allow
you to have more than 2 devices on an IDE chain.

 - Matt