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IDE/ATAPI to SCSI Converters Reviewed

Posted by michael on from the duct-tape dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Seems that someone has finally come out with IDE/ATAPI to SCSI converters to bridge the gap between the high-cost SCSI world and the low-cost IDE world. Addonics is the company and LinuxHardware.org has a full review of these two devices. The review does a good job of laying out installation and performance. These are just what I've been looking for and although a little pricey, they seem to do the job."

12 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. I've used these and.... by Kenja · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've used these and I can't help fealing that they are a bit over priced. Sure you can get a 120gig SCSI drive for way cheaper then if you got a pure SCSI solution. However you lose the benifits of SCSI in the process (like tag queu reordering). Bottom line is that for most solutions the eftra 100-200$ for these adaptors is close if not more then the price diference between SCSI and IDE to start with. Unless you have an existing device that you wish to use (like putting an IDE CD-RW into an Ultra Sparc station) these things just don't seem worth it.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:I've used these and.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What about IBM's queue reordering with their new 180gxp drives? IDE *seems* to have a primative version of this now.

  2. Old news by mattyohe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IDE to SCSI Converters?
    Posted by Cliff on 04:55 AM October 3rd, 2002 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?"

    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/03/02 42257&mode=thread&tid=137

    --
    - what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
  3. How is that different by phorm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From this?

  4. What is the point? by slashbofh · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This is a single device you have to purchase for every device you want to put onto your SCSI controller. Ok, so the idea is that your IDE or ATAPI device is cheaper. Is it $100 cheaper, which is what it appears the converters cost? If so, is it really worth it to buy the drive, buy the converter, hook them up, and then hope if something goes wrong you can debug it? How many people out there have SCSI controllers that are crying for a device they can't find that is SCSI.

    Save your money for neon lights, or plexiglass, or whatever other case mod you were going to blow money on.

  5. ISA Adapters by DrLudicrous · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Screw SCSI adapaters. Make me something useful in the laboratory- like an ISA to PCI adapter. There are tons of ISA cards floating in science labs all throughout the world, and they become useless because when users upgrade their computers, there are no ISA slots.

    I cannot tell you all how many times I have come across this issue. I have seen some ISA adapters that cost upwards of several thousand dollars. Has anyone seen anything better and cheaper?

  6. Not sure on economics.... by rainwalker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just for kicks, I looked up two Seagate hard drives on Pricewatch....I selected the ST336938LW (Ultra160) and ST340016A (ATA100), as both are 40 gig (well, 37 for the SCSI one) with comparable features (~9 ms access times, 7200 RPM). The priced out at $218 for SCSI and $80 for the ATA drive. I can't believe that the controller card costs $140, especially given that I could buy an adapter card for $100 (and still let the add-on card maker make a profit). What exactly is the difference here? It seems like the SCSI drive would have higher quality, although I can't seem to find MTBF numbers for the drives. Anyone who is more knowledgable want to expand on this?

  7. What a coinkidink... by wowbagger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just contacted Addonics to get a returned materials authorization (RMA) number for my IDE to SCSI adaptor, since it would not work.

    Specifically, when I hooked it up to my Maxtor 120G drive and my SGI Indy, the Indy didn't see the drive. Hooking it up to my Linux box's Adaptec controller let me get the drive info (cat /proc/scsi/scsi), but any attempt to actually access sectors on the drive locked the SCSI bus up solid.

    The drive itself works just fine on the Linux box's IDE, as well on my Firewire bay, so that exonerates the drive. The Adaptec works just fine on my scanner, outboard 3G SCSI disk, and CD burner, so that exonerates the Linux box's SCSI controller. The SGI boots fine from its SCSI disks, exonerating the Indy.

    I told Addonics all this. Their response - "We've passed that on to our engineers." Two weeks later, when I had heard nothing, I contacted them again. "We are still waiting for our engineers".

    At that point I asked for an RMA. After they emailed me the RMA request form, and I faxed it back, they contact me via email - "Have you tried using our SCSI controller card - it works much better with our SCSI card."

    Now, were I using some generic SCSI card from a back alley somewhere I could accept this sort of a response, but Adaptec? Excuse me, who CREATED the SCSI standard? Ignoring the fact that I seriously doubt they have a SCSI controller card for my Indy (which is what I am trying to put the drive on).

    I'll be interested in hearing anybody else's experiences - after all my experience is just a datum.

    But if anybody else has a different IDE to SCSI adaptor they want to recommend, please reply.

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
  8. case for external ide drives... by gimpboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    kinda on topic. i was wondering if there was a little more native solution for having a box full of ide drives connected to a computer with an external ide interface? right now i have a box with my scsi stuff (tape, mo drive, cdr, cdrw, etc), but i use ide drives because i just cannot beat the price. i have the scsi stuff connected to my computer with a scsi cable.

    since putting more than 3 hard drives in my case makes things a little crowded, i was wondering if there was an alternative similar to what i've done with the scsi stuff.

    --
    -- john
  9. There is a good reason to use these: by bernz · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It can be used well for RAID. In fact we're using them on a RAID device. See, 3ware makes a really cool 12-port IDE RAID card (ata 133). It's quite fast and good. But it IS limited at 12 drives for a single volume. For home use, that's MORE than fine (2.8TB is fine for most people in a 4U). But some of us need more and more than that, some of us need the ability to expand.

    Enter the conversion.

    Adaptec makes a pricey 4-port external SCSI card. That's a total of 14*4 usuable drives on a single bus. SCSI drives ARE expensive and when you have 40 of them, it's way more expensive, even with the converters. I see these converters as an ideal way to built multi-Terrabyte arrays at 3/4 or less of the cost of a SCSI array.

  10. I've been using this for a long time by neonstz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bought such an adapter from a japanese company about 3 years ago. I'm not sure if I bought it from a retailer or directly from the manufacturer, since I had to use a translation tool to convert the japanese characters to figure out how to use the online ordering system.

    The box it came in was worth the money alone. A lot of good engrish, like "Will reduce CPU power of system".

    Anyway, the adapter is alive and works fine in my SGI Indigo 2 workstation, with a 27 GB IBM-drive.

  11. I can see the perfect use by FueledByRamen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Assuming that you have a metric fuckton of cash to blow, you could make one hell of a RAID system with this and a SCSI card that I have. Go to eBay and buy an IBM ServeRAID 3 SCSI card. This is a card that does RAID onboard, and has 3 Adaptec chips on it for a total capacity of 45 (!) drives (15 per channel, 3 channels). Grab one of those for the whole $35 it cost me to buy originally, 45 SCSI -> IDE controllers, and 45 320GB IDE drives. Instant 14.4 TB raid array! You can only use one channel per raidset, so you'd really have 3x 5tb logical drives to work with (or just 45 drives to software-raid together), but still! Imagine a beowulf cluster of the porn stored on that!

    Total cost:
    $35 ServeRAID controller
    $4500 45x IDE-SCSI adapters @ $100 ea
    $23625 45x 320gb IDE drives @ $525 ea
    $100 Shitload of cabling
    $400 Good enclosure for 45 drives

    Total price: $28,660 for 14.4TB, or $1.99 per GB (Price goes up a bit if you use RAID5, as capacity is dropped some)

    --
    Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)