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[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Hard Disk Drives | Hard Disk Performance |
Hard Disk External Performance Factors ]
Command Overhead and Multiple Device Considerations
When looking at interface specifications or raw transfer rates, don't forget that each
transfer from the hard disk requires that a set of commands be sent to the hard disk to
select what will be sent and to control the transfer. These take a certain amount of time,
and this command overhead can and will reduce performance.
In comparing the SCSI and IDE/ATA interfaces, command overhead is an important
consideration. SCSI is a much more intelligent and capable bus, but it is also more
complex, which means more work must be done to set up a transfer. This means that SCSI can
be slower than IDE/ATA in a single-user, single-tasking environment, even though it can be
much faster and more capable in a machine that is supporting multiple users or multiple
devices on the same bus. SCSI shines when you need to use multiple devices on a single
bus, where IDE/ATA starts to become cumbersome. See here for more
on the eternal IDE vs. SCSI question.
Next: Disk Caching
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