FUDBusters: Serial ATA Storage Drives

FUDBust: The SCSI drives that were the heart of the data center five years ago provided no better performance or MTBF than today's Serial ATA drives. We looked at the specifications for three SCSI drives introduced in 1999 and 2000, then compared them with the same vendors' Serial ATA drives announced in 2004. We found little or no difference between the drives in MTBF, throughput or disk RPMs. Analysis details can be found here.

SCSI vendors won't yield ground lightly to the less profitable Serial ATA equipment. There are important differences between Serial ATA and SCSI drives, but don't let a vendor deter you based solely on speed or reliability. The latest SCSI drives do have better performance, but it comes at a premium--buy only what you need.