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Today's IDE hard drives with 8mb cache
memory are pretty impressive, hook them up in RAID and they are even
more impressive. But how fast can you really go with IDE? IDE has a
theoretical bandwidth limitation of 133mbs, so what is faster? What
about cable length? I don't know about you, but being limited by an 18
inch cable length is extremely restrictive, especially in a tower case.
Even though IDE cables can be had up to 36 inches, the longer they are
the less IDE can perform. What about reliability over the long term,
especially under severe stress of a drive transferring data 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week? Most people can acknowledge that that kind of stress
will kill a desktop IDE hard drive. So what about IDE based servers, is
it really worth the risk with warranties shrinking down to just 1 year?
Do you really want to risk loosing valuable data with an IDE hard drive
that has this many limitations? So what is the answer? What is the next
step beyond IDE? The answer is...Small
Computer System Interface or
what is commonly referred to as "SCSI".
Today we venture
into a world that very few hardware sites have ever covered. Today we
enter the SCSI zone... No, we are not going to show you "entry level"
SCSI, we are going way up the ladder with some of the newest Ultra320
technology available! Seagate has honored us by offering up one of their
new Ultra320 SCSI hard drives for testing; the Cheetah 10K.6 ST3146807LW
with an whopping 147 gigs of storage capacity! Is your mouth watering
yet? If it isn't, it will be by the time you get to the testing portion
of this review!
What is Ultra320 SCSI?
Without going into
great detail to the point of where everyone is confused, including us,
Ultra320 is simply the interface "language" or protocol a drive uses to
communicate with a host computer or network. The "320" means that the
technology allows for a total data transfer of up to 320 MBytes per sec.
In order to achieve the 320 MByte ceiling, you must have a Ultra320
interface card and run Ultra320 compatible hard drives in multi hard
drive configurations or RAID. Sorry folks, Ultra320 does NOT mean that a
single Ultra320 hard drive will transfer data at 320 MBytes per sec.
As far as SCSI
technology goes, it has been around about as long as the computer
itself. The technology has been so solid over the years, it refuses to
die out. Instead of becoming dated and useless, SCSI devices and
interface cards just keep getting faster and faster. Because the
technology is so solid and reliable, it is the driving force behind the
mass storage on most of the world's servers and high end workstations.
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