Which is faster, an Ultra-ATA/66 drive or an Ultra Wide SCSI drive?

Ultra Wide SCSI drives have a reputation for being the fastest. And it costs you at least $650 for an Ultra Wide PCI controller board with one 18 Gig Ultra Wide drive (see MacGurus). A comparable ATA/66 controller and ATA/66 drive will cost you about $300. Is the SCSI worth twice the cost? Let's find out:

LONGER BAR is FASTER. RED BAR IS FASTEST.

 

Conclusion
A single Ultra-Wide SCSI drive on an Ultra Wide controller is no faster than a single Ultra-ATA/66 drive on an Ultra-ATA/66 controller.

Is the SCSI worth twice the cost? I don't think so.

Comments
Now don't email me that the test was unfair. The SCSI drive was a 9 gig 10,000 rpm Cheetah while both ATA/66 drives were 20 gig 7200 rpm models. Test drives are hard to come by.

I'll try to match the drives more closely in future testing which will include dual drives in a RAID array (both interfaces).

 

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

• All three drives were tested on a G4/400 Sawtooth with 256MB of RAM. Disk cache was set to 512K to purposely nullify the effects of disk caching on results.
• Test drives included
  The Seagate Cheetah 9 gig 10,000 RPM Ultra Wide (ST39103LW) with Initio Miles2 Ultra2 adapter.
  The Seagate Barracuda 20 gig 7200 RPM ATA/66 (ST320430A)
  The Western Digital Expert 20 gig 7200 RPM ATA/66 (installed on Sawtooth G4/400 at the factory)
• For the DUPLICATE THREE PHOTOS test, I copied a 27MB Adobe Photoshop document onto each drive and made two copies. Then I timed how long it took to duplicate the three 27MB docs on the same drive. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: folder size * 2 / seconds.
• For the DUPLICATE 91MB FOLDER test, I copied the Unreal Tournament Demo folder containing 202 documents onto each drive. Then I timed how long it took to duplicate it on the same drive. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: folder size * 2 / seconds.
• The ATTO disk benchmark was run using Express-Pro Tools 2.2 benchmark test with 8MB maximum file size and system disk cache disabled. Sustained Rate is displayed in the charts. Peak rates can be impressive but do not reflect typical drive performance.

BIG MAHALO TO...

...MacGurus for the use of the Seagate Cheetah and Initio Miles Ultra2.