Is HD speed that important

[Cyberus]

I was just wondering...I have always been a little obsessed with SCSI, and always think about how cool it would be to have an ultra wide SCSI interface and drive for high transfer speeds...but is hard disk speed really THAT important?

Obviously for servers, for direct to hard disk recording, etc it is...but is my, and no doubt others', obsession with speed a but needless? I mean, if I have an 060 in my A1200 and still use the mobo IDE controller, will I even notice the fact that it ain't as fast as it could be?

[lempkee]

well lets say you are a gamer...

YES hdd speed is important , and most of all DMA transfers! .

lets say you are a browser .. and cache is on hdd ... yes hd speed is important.

old ide controllers in amiga is crap!..

scsi is better but uw scsi is just great

cheers

[SamuraiCrow]

It makes a bigger difference on the PC but yes it makes a difference.  :-D

[unclewilli-amigalover]

yep, hd speed is very important, to me anyway. iam using eide express and the old driver was running about 2.3 mips then i received an update driver, now iam getting nearly 5 mips. made a big differance...

[bhoggett]

Yes, HD speed is very significant, provided your IDE interface can keep up.

On an A1200, using the internal port, HD speed is irrelevant. On modern hardware you certainly feel the difference when using a fast drive.

Incidentally, the gap between SCSI and IDE is also much smaller on modern hardware. In fact, you need a really pressing reason to choose SCSI these days, as IDE drives and interfaces are pretty fast.

[iamaboringperson]

..but is hard disk speed really THAT important?

YES!! Well, to some more than others!
To me, HDD speed is very important, one of the more important factors these days.
Some people seem to be okay with slower computers etc.

...but is my, and no doubt others', obsession with speed a but needless?

You have to remember that it's not speed just for the hell of it. It's peoples time we're talking about here.
I have better things to do that sit around and wait for computers to boot and programs to compile.

will I even notice the fact that it ain't as fast as it could be?

Sure! In time you will surely notice.
Try this experiment:
Step one: Set up a fast HDD with the OS(etc.). Use it for three months.
Step two: Set up a slow HDD with the OS(etc.). Put the fast HDD aside, and start to use the slow one.
You will notice a difference, and after using the fast stuff for a while, slow computer hardware will most likely irritate you!

[Karlos]

Speed is important but efficient transfer is even moreso in my book. DMA should not be considered a luxury, it should be standard.

As it goes, the standard IDE interface in the 600/1200/4000 is just bobbins - programmed IO, heavy CPU usage. Not pretty...

[iamaboringperson]

Incidentally, the gap between SCSI and IDE is also much smaller on modern hardware. In fact, you need a really pressing reason to choose SCSI these days, as IDE drives and interfaces are pretty fast.

The main advantage of SCSI these days is that it is Asyncronous.
SCSI is really better for multitasking than IDE, and that is where it will really perform.

If like me, you have several programs accessing the HDD at the same time(well not exactly the same time - but you know what I mean) you will certainly benefit from a SCSI HDD. I'm the sort of person who likes to load several programs at once, and an IDE HDD goes bezerk and takes much longer than a SCSI one.

[Tigger]

Cyberus wrote:
I was just wondering...I have always been a little obsessed with SCSI, and always think about how cool it would be to have an ultra wide SCSI interface and drive for high transfer speeds...but is hard disk speed really THAT important?

Obviously for servers, for direct to hard disk recording, etc it is...but is my, and no doubt others', obsession with speed a but needless? I mean, if I have an 060 in my A1200 and still use the mobo IDE controller, will I even notice the fact that it ain't as fast as it could be?

I currently get about 70 MB/s (not a misprint) from my IDE raid, thats 3 uncompressed streams of D1 video out my VT[3].   Is that faster that what you are going to see from a single Ultrawide SCSI??  Yeah it is, in fact I have those in there too, its just until I Raid0 them together, they are slower then the IDE configuration.  EIDE & SATA raid PCI cards are easily available and prevent most of the shortcomings of those formats.  
      -Tig
   

[iamaboringperson]

I currently get about 70 MB/s (not a misprint) from my IDE raid, thats 3 uncompressed streams of D1 video out my VT[3]. Is that faster that what you are going to see from a single Ultrawide SCSI?? Yeah it is, in fact I have those in there too, its just until I Raid0 them together, they are slower then the IDE configuration. EIDE & SATA raid PCI cards are easily available and prevent most of the shortcomings of those formats.
-Tig

I'm not saying I doubt you, but I would love to know the exact details of your configuration.

Especialy drive models/speeds etc. :-)

[KennyR]

Yes, HD speed makes the world of difference. Even on a system without VM, it makes the whole system feel more responsive. In a world of steadily increasing code size, any interface that uses CPU time to poll it is dead, dead, dead - and with good reason.

As to SCSI vs IDE, it's pretty established that modern SCSI is better in almost every way than modern IDE. The actual interfaces don't have much difference, although SCSI has a slight technical advantage still (although transfers use no CPU time on SCSI or UDMA-IDE, drive commands still do on IDE. SCSI is also better with multiple devices).

What's more important to remember is that SCSI drives are built to server specs and have far better components and technology than IDE drives, which are generally only built to desktop specs. The only IDE drive which could claim to come close to server level is the Western Digital Raptor, and it falls quite seriously short of the big boys at the top.

[Cyberus]

thanks for your replies guys

when I asked, "is it THAT important" I didn't mean is it totally unimportant, it's just that I was thinking some users may notice the differences more than others. I mean, for many users fast HD access may be just a luxury, rather than a necessity, if you gather what I mean

[iamaboringperson]

Cyberus wrote:

... it's just that I was thinking some users may notice the differences more than others. I mean, for many users fast HD access may be just a luxury, rather than a necessity, if you gather what I mean

Sure, it's kind of like those people who are okay with 486's, and want to run all the latest apps on them.

Or people who don't know the difference between a sports car and a dumb old stationwagon.

IMAO some people just don't deserve to use computers, if you don't want speed.... ...nah only joking. ;-)

[KennyR]

The line between luxury and necessity usually depends how patient you are and what you want to do.

But supposing you got a coldfire (just for the sake of argument) for an Amiga and wanted to watch some divx. The coldfire might be able to play it, but the drain on it caused by the Amiga IDE would make watching divx impossible.

[FALCON1]

I Got more than 80MB/sec on a Ultra 320 10k RPM single SCSI hard drive
attached on a U320 controller....so YES, IDE is cheaper but still far
long from SCSI performance... And I even didn't try 15K rpm drives...

Moreover IDE raid is not sompliant to standard, so forget this
####...Everything which is not standard is not reliable... So I hope
you won't lose any video on your VT[3]...