What is the difference between SCSI and IDE (or EIDE or ATAPI)?
• Answer: SCSI is superior to IDE in nearly every application except for very simple, one disk drive and maybe a CD or scanner system. IDE is less expensive than SCSI. In other words, IDE is probably the best choice in most home applications. If you have a system with compute-intensive or storage intensive applications, SCSI is a better choice. Here are some reasons: • Speed: The latest EIDE systems are nearly as fast as Wide Ultra SCSI for single disk drive applications. However, in systems with a “busy” bus and a multitasking OS, SCSI will win the race. During a data transfer, when data is not actually being moved between devices, SCSI will free the bus for use by other devices. This makes much more efficient use of the bus. IDE will hold the connection between the two devices until the transfer is complete. Wide Ultra SCSI is about two times as Fast as EIDE. LVD and Ultra160 SCSI are many times faster than EIDE. • Number of Devices: An IDE bus can have two peripherals attached (your
