FUDBusters: Serial ATA Storage Drives update from August 2004

What: Storage vendors claim Serial ATA storage drives lack the performance or reliability required to operate in enterprise data centers

When: July 2004

FUDFactor: SCSI drive manufacturers say users shouldn't move to Serial ATA because the emerging technology doesn't have the speed or MTBF (mean time between failures) to make it enterprise-ready

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.