OT: Torn between SCSI and SATA for RAID

[Ian Jefferson]

>
>
> I'd rather run 5 SATA cables then one SCSI cable (say 68pin) with  
> multiple heads...   The darn SCSI cables are so thick,  
> comparatively, that running them in your case is a lot harder :-)
>
>

Well everyone's mileage may vary.  Parallel cables only work nicely  
when you have a stack of drives all close & lined up together.  I  
personally yearn for a simple 40gbps daisychainable serial bus.  I  
hoped firewire would have been it but we seem to be stuck at 800mpbs.

The other cabling option I forgot about is USB2 or Firewire.

There are a number of very low cost external cases that pre-package  
USB/Firewire SATA converters.  You basically fill a hard disk case  
with SATA or ATA drives and connect your computer to the case via a  
single firewire or USB cable.  I have not seen one of these that's  
hot swap yet but I did see a few of these recently in Tokyo Akihabara  
district for ~$100 so I assume they are available all over.  The  
box's I have seen are 4 drive systems.  Just fill them with your  
favorite commodity hard disk I guess.

At ~50MB/s the interface is plenty fast and greatly simplifies the  
cable issue inside the PC.

IJ