using only USB harddisks ?

[Taavi Burns]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 04:35:12PM -0400, Robert Brockway wrote:
> For low end/home systems I think using Firewire-2 would probably provide
> acceptable performance and allow for a lot of scalability.

Firewire supplies most of the speed and multiple-device scalability of
SCSI from just a few years ago.  Sure new SCSI will kick its ass,
but Firewire-2 with two drives will seriously kick the ass of two
HDs on ATA133 afaik. (most definitely ATA100)

> An alternative is to put the system disk(s) on ATA133 channels and have
> all other data accessible via firewire.

Don't think you really need this, assuming your BIOS and OS are happy booting
off of the media.  You can of course even mount the HD inside the case and
use firewire (but that's generally what SATA is for these days).

> [1] The drives can be daisy-chained but there is a limits to the length of
> any one chain.

63 devices per bus.  I wouldn't be that worried.  ;)  Also realise that for
large files you're going to hit the transferrate limit of your HD for large
files, which is generally lower than the bus speed.  A 15krpm SCSI drive
can sustain 50MB/s.  Your average 7200rpm ATA disk cannot.  Bursting is
a different matter, though...for that you may well be better off with
SATA or ATA133 for your OS and application drive.

-- 
taa
/*eof*/
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml