IDE to SCSI Bridge Adaptors

[hallkbrd]

Has anyone tried any of the Acard IDE to SCSI bridge adapters on a video raid system? I am considering using 6 striped 200GB drives with adapters as secondary storage on a U160 scsi bus (well actually 320, but the adapters are 160).

In case anyone doesn't know, these hardware adapters allow IDE hard drives to emulate U160 SCSI drives. Although the physical drives do not get faster, it eliminates the need for special IDE raid cards, providing cheap dense storage (200 GB for ~$300).

Thoughts?

[johnq]

I have not used these adapters, but the one caution would be the "efficiency" of the adapter. Go to the manufacturer's web site and/or call their tech support. You need to know the sustained transfer rate using these. Most manufactures simply state the interface bus rate (i.e., U160 is a theoretical 160 MB/sec bus rate), which is meaningless. As an example, there are Firewire to IDE drive convertors. The theoretical speed of Firewire is 400 Mbits or 50 MB/sec. The first generation of convertors supported a sustained transfer rate under 18 MB/sec. The second generation of these adapters, such as those using the Oxford 911 chip, sustain over 40 MB/sec.

john