[Linux] scsi ide linux

[rscotka]

kerryb wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Charles Higgins wrote:
> 
> > I may get in trouble for this but here it goes:
> >
> No trouble, but I think the messages was mis-read. The question is on adding a ide drive to a box that already has a scsi drive to enjoy the inexpensive nature of ide to increase the overall storage of the box. I scanned the first part of the site, and it looks like it is either ide or scci, not both.
> 

scsi and ide devices can coexist well within the x86 environment but
with
certain precautions. from my own experience i found that an IDE drive
which
lacked a format caused headaches for LILO when a scsi drive was the boot
drive. this mostly occured when /etc/lilo.conf was modified and
/sbin/lilo
was run to make the change stick. the ide drive wasn't recognized and
thus
the machine was rendered unbootable. i solved it by pulling the ide
drive
out when running LILO (removeable bay) but i'm sure there are ways
around
it that aren't that drastic. rule of thumb: always have a boot floppy at
hand when making system changes. 
as for performance: the newer IDE drives give SCSI drives a run for the
money now and are the most cost effective solution to increasing your
storage capacity. a down side is cpu utilization and
memory. scsi drives put less of a load on the system by leaning hard on 
the host bus adapter instead of the pci chipset and cpu.
the major disadvantage to ide is you are limited to how many you can put
in the box and the bus length is only 15 inches. usually you can get
away
with two drives on an ATA66 cable and the cdrom has to go to the
secondary
ide controller otherwise it brings the performance of the primary drive
down.
with 72GB drives now this is a moot point. Napster notwithstanding.....

you could start a religious war over ide vs scsi (as with anything else)
but
the gist of it is that the ATA66 drives are a good solution for a home
user. (i use SCSI... :)


russell
 
-- 
...and yet, as though, from far off, with scattered Things,
a serious, true work were being planned.
(Rilke)