smsmith@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M. Smith) (02/19/91)
jdb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian K. W. Hook) writes: [deletions] > >To sum: [IDE drives have...] >Higher capacity, lower cost, MUCH lower power consumption, relatively high >speed (vs. RLL and MFM), and high efficiency. > >Brian Could someone help me to decide between IDE and ESDI? OK, now I'm confused! I'll be buying a 486-25 with 4-8 MEGs of RAM in the next week (from Gateway). The Maxtor 200 MEG 15ms IDE drive is standard in the system, but I was planning on getting a Micropolis ESDI drive instead. I know about the physical makeup of each drive and basically how each works, and I'm convinced that the IDE is about as reliable as an ESDI drive (in the 150-200 MEG range, anyway), but here are some questions: 1) Will my IDE drive work if/when I change to OS/2? 2) I want to have as much control over my system as possible. I know that I can easily low-level format an ESDI drive, my ESDI controller will read the factory-set bad sectors from the drive or allow me to enter them manually from the keyboard. I can easily change the interleave on an ESDI drive. ESDI controllers allow for power sequencing in case I get another ESDI drive... In other words, it seems to me that an ESDI drive is very versatile (it is compatible with DOS, Unix, OS/2, etc.) and it will allow me to configure/change it however I want. Will I be able to do these things with an IDE drive? Thanks for any help! Stephen M. Smith \ + / <smsmith@hpuxa. \+++++/ " #*&<-[89s]*(k#$@-_=//a2$]'+=.(2_&*%>,,@ ircc.ohio-state. \ + / {7%*@,..":27g)-=,#*:.#,/6&1*.4-,l@#9:-) " edu> \ + / BTW, WYSInaWYG \ + / --witty.saying.ARC