On Monday 01 November 2004 19:10, ivandeaton wrote: > If internal ATA's give the same peformance as external SCSI's... everyone > would be doing HD video from slow internal drives instead of ultra fast > arrays. I wasn't watching this thread but it looks like I missed some fun. :) Anyway in case anybody still didn't know: SCSI drives might have comparable speed specifications to fast IDE drives, but IDE puts much more strain on the processor because the controller is less intelligent. Hence, an X mbps SCSI disc will allow for more tracks than an X mbps IDE disc even if X is the same for both drives. SCSI RAID arrays obviously make this performance increase drastically because the datatransfer rate multiplies while the processor load hardly increases. Firewire also reduces processor load compared to IDE but is much slower. This means that you could actually notice an increase of possible tracks when switching from IDE to firewire (depending on how much strain you have on your processor using plugins etc). The RPM count of the used drive doesn't enter into this; the firewire interface itself will usually be the bottleneck. An interface that has to send one bit at a time through a long cable will always be slower than an interface that pushes 32 or even multitudes through a short cable with high quality demands. The communication physics will continue to be improved for all 3 interfaces. Maurits.