DMA/100 versus SCSI

Being a skuzzy kind of guy, it pains me to say this, but the smoothest ride is usually in the middle of the stream.

Not only do IDE hard drives continue to be the least expensive, they are also the first to use new high capacities and get good third-party diagnostic support.

Moreover, they are nearly as fast as their more expensive cousins in the SCSI world.

Currently an Ultra-160 SCSI drive is not only more expensive and rare, it also requires a separate SCSI host adapter which can set you back enough, in some cases, to buy another IDE drive.

This continues to push SCSI out of the mainstream and into the server/workstation backwaters. A DMA/100 IDE is inexpensive, fast and doesn't require a stand-alone card.

I strongly recommend DMA/100 for the majority of applications and would suggest drives and motherboards supporting that interface.

P.S. For you high-end power users, I still encourage SCSI. Put your DVD, CD-RW and other ATAPI compliant drives on the native IDE bus and load up the SCSI bus with hard drives, removable media and tape. This provides better bandwidth for I/O intensive operations and avoids data underrun when you burn CD's.

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