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IDE/ATAPI to SCSI Converters Reviewed
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."
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?"
So instead of buying SCSI drives, you save money by getting cheaper, faster, but less dependable IDE drives and then shell out the price difference to adapt it to your slower SCSI bus. This seems like the worst of both worlds to me. Am I missing something?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
The performance of the IDE drives are almost the same as their SCSI counterparts. Amazing!
IDE to SCSI converter = US$99, ATAPI to SCSI converter = US$109. Both are MSRP.
IMHO, that's a really good bargain. This also proves that the real bottleneck in the IDE drives is actually that for one IDE bus, only one device can be active at a time.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
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?
For those not familiar, or trying to respond to others in this forum and don't know what to say: =)
IDE vs. SCSI article at PcMech.
SCSI & IDE Overview Good, informative, classroom materials for a university.
IDE to SCSI Adaptor Review of the ACard ARS-2000FW
ACARD Tech. - Makes SCSI to IDE converters.
These things have been around for years! I've had them for 2.5" SCSI notebooks in SparcBooks. There are pleny of SCSI-IDE bridges over at dirtcheap drives for like $50-$70 depending on whether you want wide or narrow scsi. $100 is too much.
And I've used these to hook up a bunch of 160GB IDE drives together to make a nice big huge raid array. They're great - only if you hook'em up to big drives where SCSI would be too expensive or to hook up DVD or CDRW's to Scsi only machines such as SUNs.
I just contacted Addonics to get a returned materials authorization (RMA) number for my IDE to SCSI adaptor, since it would not work.
/proc/scsi/scsi), but any attempt to actually access sectors on the drive locked the SCSI bus up solid.
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
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
For those of us who have older Unix workstations that don't know how to spell IDE, these allow us to put a decent amount of storage on them for a reasonable cost.
If you are buying IDE drives, and IDE to SCSI converters, and a SCSI card, to put into your x86 box, then yes, you need to order a nice big bowl of InstaClue.
But if you are trying to install the Gnu development tools onto an old SGI Indy, this is a great idea.
If it works - see my other post in this thread.
www.eFax.com are spammers
IDE interface -> IDE to SCSI convertor -> SCSI to IDE convertor -> IDE drive.
That would have been a very good test as to the quality of the convertors - making sure that their emulation is consistent and correct.
These products are NOT new others have been making them for years.w .html or this onew .html this one looks alot like the one addonics is selling doesn't it?
Here is one that mounts UNDER a low profile (aren't most of them like this?) ide
drive making it about the same height as an atapi cdrom drive.
http://www.acard.com/eng/product/scside/ars-2000f
http://www.acard.com/eng/product/scside/aec-7720u
Just because some company gets a write up on something at linuxhardware.org
does not make it new or news.
sparkeyjames
If sense were common everyone would have it!