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Best performance results IDE OR SCSI Hard-drive (internal)

PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2008 2:23 pm
by karayo
All is on the title, i found an harddrive 18gb scsi, just wondering if it will be the best choice for me.

Thanks ; )

IDE vs SCSI performance

PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2008 4:46 pm
by kalide
There's hardly any performance difference, but there are some functional and physical differences:

IDE - Pros:

* can use 2.5" drives for silent operation up to 137 GB. I use a laptop samsung 120G and its excellent
* Contemporary interface i.e. you can get cheap drives and also, if you are game, you can use the FAT32 format and therefore put these drives into a PC for backup. i.e. image the drive.
* Best choice for FAT32 operation under EOS 4.7 - why ? If you use FAT32 for SCSI AND also put your scsi bus on a chain with multi masters - i.e. a Mac or a PC to send samples over SCSI, then you will hose the sampler drive and lose data - SCSI simply does not allow this as implemented on EOS 4.7 as there would be two masters seeing a FAT32 drive and both would attempt to "own" it - e.g. update master boot records and FAT Tables at the same time. Boom!

So, with IDE, you can use SCSI for sample transfer, and the samples go to memory, and then saved to the IDE drive. So, no interference.


IDE - Cons:


* only useful for hard drive really as few other IDE peripherals exist and Emu decided to only allow one device on the IDE chain - so no dual drives.
* IDE interface is not exposed to the outside whereas SCSI does

SCSI - Pros

* can chain a few drives to simplify backup
* external interface which means you can have the drives outside the Emu
* More options e.g. SCSI Compact Flash Adapters, ZIP Drives, Orbs etc.

SCSI - Cons:

* Old interface, hard to find anything new
* drives are typically very noisy - awful for studio use
* drives are power hungry - sometimes out of spec for Emu samplers for startup currents which can burn your power supply especially the larger drives.
* Cabling is a royal pain as you have to be exactly on with quality cables, termination, cable length, and sometimes order of powering on.


However, you can run both at the same time, so take your pick. For my money, IDE is the best option - "Enjoy the Silence" :)

Also - rather than hack a special adapter for a 2.5" drive in my Emu, I bought a $5 IDE to 2.5" IDE adapter and used a strip or two of Sticky Velcro to attach (i.e. stick to, not interface with) the drive to the existing SCSI drive in my sampler - makes for easy removal if I need to and also isolates the drive sonically even more. Perfect.


M :grin:

PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2008 10:49 pm
by emx
what is the maximum IDE hard drive size eos 4.61 can handle?
dont wanna use scsi cuz of the noise...

PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2008 12:28 am
by art
emx wrote:what is the maximum IDE hard drive size eos 4.61 can handle?
dont wanna use scsi cuz of the noise...


18gb

PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2008 10:25 pm
by emx
thank You art!

this baby would do the job if i decide to change to 4.7?
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=HM121HC&cpc=SUGG

i ve heard something about that i hafta change the polarity of the powerplug, is that true?