Greetings again. I bought a Dell refurbished box with the intention 
of using it as a replacement for one of main servers. However, it has 
shown occasional IDE problems just in the few hours of installing 
NetBSD 1.5 on it. So, I'm not going to rely on it and need to buy a 
different box.

In the past, I have noticed some IDE problems when thrashing 
different PC systems, such as untarring pkgsrc.tgz. For instance, on 
this system, copying pkgsrc.tgz to the hard drive and untarring 
caused enough IDE errors for the system to need a full powercycle 
(just resetting the system didn't clear the drive problem and the 
PROM couldn't find the drive). When I untarred the file from the 
CD-ROM, there were no problems.

So, I am lead to believe that IDE isn't the greatest thing in the 
world. My question is almost historic: should I use SCSI instead of 
IDE for reliability? I'm considering getting a Dell 1550 rack system 
that has on-board SCSI instead of the Dell 350, which is IDE-based. 
If not, how do I pick the "right" IDE controllers, particularly 
because every motherboard has its own, and manufacturers switch 
controller chips without warning.

--Paul Hoffman