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Single IDE vs Dual IDE?

Posted by Cliff on from the that-second-chain-induces-a-performance-hit dept.

jrsimmons asks: "I'm running performance tests on IDE interface configurations for my company. I've discovered that disk to disk I/O is significantly faster (in the realm of 30%-40%) when only a single IDE interface is active versus when two IDE interfaces are active. This is significant as our servers are used to provide Point-of-Sale availability for registers in the retail environment, which is heavily dependent on disk i/o performance for efficiency. I have run the tests under both Windows and our retail OS (sorry, no Linux) with similar results. What are some possible explanations for the detrimental effect the second active ide controller has on disk I/O speed?" Has anyone measured this deficiency on Linux and other Unices?

2 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Disk I/O performance by nadie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you are running I/O intensive applications, there is no subsitute for SCSI. IDE is still too braindead to do the job effectivly with decent interactive, multitasking performance. Don't waste your companies time on fiddling with consumer level hardware in a professional environment.

    How much is your time worth? How much is this application worth to your company? In a professional server, SCSI is not expensive.

  2. Not a tech problem by sql*kitten · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is significant as our servers are used to provide Point-of-Sale availability for registers in the retail environment, which is heavily dependent on disk i/o performance for efficiency.

    Whenever I come across a scenario like this, I tell people to take a step back and before making any technical decisions, figure out what it is you are actually trying to accomplish. If you are really after high performance, get SCSI disks. If you're after cheapness, then you will simply have to accept that IDE disks are slower.

    This isn't a question for a techie to answer, BTW. One of your business managers will have to think about how many transactions per day are processed, when the cost of the system can be recouped at a given percentage of each transaction, whether or not paying more for SCSI makes financial sense, and whether higher unit cost will mean you sell fewer units. Get one of your tame MBAs to think about this for you.