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IDE to SCSI Converters?

Posted by Cliff on from the how-well-do-they-work dept.

ericdano asks: "Addonics has announced a pair of SCSI solutions, which convert common ATAPI devices and IDE hard drives to high-speed SCSI devices on all Windows, Macintosh, and Linux-based computers: the IDE-SCSI converter ($100) for hard drives and the ATAPI-SCSI converter ($110) for ATAPI-based CDRW, DVD-R/RW, DVD-ROM or CD-ROMs. The company has also announced a high-performance single-channel Ultra160 SCSI PCI host controller ($170) with 160MB/sec. data throughput. How safe are these products?"

1 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. A sensible use senario ... by Boiotos · · Score: 5, Informative
    of the ATAPI/IDE to SCSI converter might be when one a) already has a SCSI controller and b) wants to add many additional ATAPI devices to the machine. A SCSI chain can comprise many more devices than your usual 2 and 2 on an IDE controller. Furthermore, one might hope that the SCSI converter would keep the ATAPI/IDE device nicely saturated regardless of system activity. Perhaps a CD copying station would benefit from this arrangement.

    Nevertheless, when it comes to hard drives, the basic performance of the drive itself will be a limiting factor. I doubt your IDE drive will suddenly get a boost in performance, though it would be neat to see some Bonnie++ results to confirm this.

    As for the SCSI controller, does anyone have any experience with these? Its a fair bit cheaper than the equivalent Adaptec model. After putting SCSI in my Linux workstation at work, I'm hooked on it: what's not to like about cutting compile times by 50%? Maybe I could get SCSI at home if this controller is the real deal.