Re: [OT] SATA vs. SCSI

From: Dave Hornford (OSS_at_HornfordAssociates.com)
Date: 10/28/05

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    Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:15:20 -0600
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

    Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

    >I will hopefully soon be building a server to donate to my church to
    >replace a used one that I donated earlier this year. My question is
    >this: Is SATA or SCSI preferrable?
    >
    >I am shooting for top notch reliability. I understand that components
    >will occasionally fail. However, I have always understood that SCSI was
    >preferable to ATA. Now that SATA is in the mix, I am not sure if that
    >is still true. I have not kept up with the latest and greatest in terms
    >of technology developments in that area.
    >
    >Tha machine will be acting as a terminal server and also housing all the
    >user home directories and probably a few other services.
    >
    >I am wondering what the rest of the world, at least as far as those that
    >read this list, think.
    >
    >-Roberto
    >
    >
    Roberto,

    Without any question SATA is less reliable than SCSI.
    As a rule the MTBF numbers for SCSI and SATA are about the same number
    of hours, but SCSI numbers are usually reported at 100% load and SATA at
    20% load. Also, as a rule SATA have slower data transfer speeds, and the
    SATA architecture is less capable of moving data.

    However, I don't know if your load will saturate slow drives - a key
    question is how big is your church, how many concurrent users, do you
    have other data bottlenecks etc., etc...

    Keep in mind that basic stats will tell you that with a sample size of
    2-4 drives your variation from the mean & mode can be high.
    I'd suggest looking at the price, and what RAID/spare configurations you
    can put together. You may be able to build a more reliable configuration
    out of less reliable parts for a lower price.

    Dave
    www.hornfordassociates.com 

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