[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Hard Disk Drives | Hard Disk Interfaces and Configuration | IDE/ATA vs. SCSI: Interface Comparison ]

Device Type Support

At one point, SCSI held a significant advantage over IDE/ATA in terms of the types of devices each interface supported. Since SCSI is a high-level system interface used by performance machines, there has always been a wide variety of different kinds of hardware produced for the SCSI interface. In contrast, IDE/ATA began as a hard disk interface, and support for other types of hardware was only added later on. Even as late as 1997, there were many more hardware choices if you had a SCSI system than if you went with IDE.

This has changed in recent years. As the number of IDE/ATA systems on the market has grown, many manufacturers have migrated their devices to the IDE interface. A good example is that of CD-RW drives; a few years ago you needed a SCSI system if you wanted to use a CD-RW drive, but they are now commonly available for both interfaces. There are still more different device choices for SCSI than IDE, but the difference is less important than it once was.

One place where SCSI beats IDE/ATA easily is in support for external devices: IDE/ATA has none. SCSI drives can even be located in a different room from the machine that is using them, if that's an issue for some reason.

Next: Device Availability and Selection


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