On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 04:05:21PM +0000, Chris.Smith@raytheon.co.uk wrote:
> I shouldn't mention ATA200, as this will probably turn into a
> Emacs/vi style war.

If you won't mention ATA200, I won't mention Ultra320.

> ATA/IDE and SCSI will
> bottom out at *exactly* the same level in the end because of
> hardware limitations.

You're forgetting one very, very important factor, though: SCSI has the
distinct advantage of being decoupled from the CPU, while ATA isn't - at
least in common implementations. Further, SCSI can hang more drives per
interface, which gives better overlap between CPU and I/O, as well as better
real-world performance, and higher ultimate capacity.

I refuse to build systems on ATA. (Well, except for one Win2K client system,
but it wouldn't notice anyway.) Yes, doing things better than the masses has
its price, but you reap the benefits in improved performance and ease of
configuration.