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I'm wondering what the difference between SCSI and IDE are?

Things I've heard so far:
1. SCSI allows you to chain 16 or so devices, while IDE only allows two per plug.

2. IDE is a ##### of a lot cheaper

3. SCSI is able to operate independently of the processor

I'm trying to do some research for a friend who is getting a video surveillance system installed. The system only stores images for 5 days, but she wants to be able to burn (cd or dvd) the images and keep them indefinitely. The system salesperson didn't know how to burn the images, but told her that she'd need SCSI to do it.

Is SCSI that much faster at burning large files?

I'm afraid I'm not much use to offer her advice since I don't know anything about SCSI drives (and only a very little about IDE).

Suggestions??

TIA
RB

The transfer speed of SCSI is far greater than that of an IDE drive, what kind of system is this? Is it PC based? Any PC or Server class machine that has SCSI drives, usually always has an IDE controller built on board for the CDROM. A burner could easier be put in its place, or and IDE controller card can be installed in a PCI slot and hooked up that way.

I would tell her to get more info about the system and exactly why the drive has to be SCSI and cant be IDE.

I have not built a SCSI computer in years (we used build SCO unix/Informix boxes with them when we were doing a lot of police station dispatch centers and town halls), but as I understand it newer ATA/100 drives are comparable to the lower-end desktop SCSII drives in performance. What I do not like about SCSI drives is waiting the extra time it to load the BIOS and initiate the drives when booting-up, but that isn't a big deal. Larry

Yeah I have worked around police stations quite a bit, I use to work for a company that provides and maintains the NCIC pcs in the PDS here. Now the company I work for runs that network, but yeah I agree the only reason I would ever get SCSI these days is if it was a high end server and I wanted to run RAID.

Well, actually, one can build a RAID configuration with ATA drives. There are quite a few ATA RAID controllers and motherboards with RAID chips. My new motherboard (which I’m still trying to find to install) has one. If you just want to mirror ATA drives, Windows NT/2000 Server can do that without RAID hardware. Larry

I usually always run Raid 5, or Raid 0+1 if I am configuring a SQL server, and I never would bet my lunch on a software raid .... hardware is the way to go.

Well, we didn't run SQL, but we ran our Fox-based accounting package for several years with hard disks mirrored with NT Server and it worked well and we did not loose any data. The mirror did however save things couple of times when one of two drives failed--both of the original drives failed at different times. Prior to that we ran it on Novell with two IDE drives mirrored with a hardware controller. That handled the database/accounting needs of a $million a year computer manufacturing/retail company plus accounting for a travel agency in 1991. Before that we were using ESDI drives and a hardware controller. Before that it was Novell and a single MFM drive with a huge capacity... 30 MegaBytes. The whole time, 14 years, we used the same Fox/DOS-based accounting package (SBT). Now, we use QuickBooks Pro on Win 2000 Pro machine with no mirror and simply backup the company file to another computer on the network. So, we have bet our lunch and still have it after all these years, and it has outlived a lot of stuff that was kept in file drawers. Yes, we still open that old Fox/DOS accounting progam from time-to-time when, for example, a customer, who we haven't heard from in years, calls up and says his or her computer has been working fine since dirt was invented, and asks us a question about what is in it (we ran a manufacturing module) and how it can be upgraded. I do, however, agree with your choice for large SQL servers. Larry

I agree completely with you, each application has its time and place. The machine that I am on now has on onboard raid controller, and that is the direction alot of vendors are going. I'm not using it to mirror but rather just to stripe , all my important and vital data is on my Samba server. The reason I lean towards the new hardware based raid controllers is because thats what I work with day in and day out, and seeing that I am just 24 you can call me a new kid on the block as far as Fox/DOS goes. I have been exposed to it, we just converted a company from Fox/Dos to Great Plains/2000 Server ..... lol how times change.

We used to do Great Plains also (and Profit as well). But as you suggest, that has probably changed a lot. Especially now that Microsoft owns it. I'll bet that FOX conversion was a lot of "fun." I switched our data base stuff other than accounting to Access years ago and went through the rather challenging learning curve of getting use to event-driven programming. Presently learning MySQL and have plans to set-it-up on a local system running on Linux for development. It runs OK on Win 2000 Pro and I've interfaced Access to it. That's a lot cheaper (free) than Microsoft's product and is compatible with my web server. Larry

Lets just say we call it Great Pains

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