Advantages: Plug n play, reliable, efficient
Disadvantages: A bit pricy

...Finally, just when I was begining to give up on ever attaching my SCSI drive to my system, along came the answer to my prayers. A neat fitted in seconds, no need to open the case solution; the Adaptec USB to SCSI connector. This piece of electronic genius allows you to connect virtually any SCSI device directly to your PC through its USB port. It works and is brilliant. It just plugs in and away it goes. Everything is supplied and with easy to follow directions. It is not cheap though, expect to pay about $50 ($90) for it but compared with a SCSI card & cables it probably works out the same and is definately 100% less hastle than trying to configure an already stuffed full to the brim machine. It's got my vote.... Read review

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Advantages: A bargain. Easy to install and used. Good entry level SCSI controller.
Disadvantages: No support for higher data rates.

...If you plug an SCSI card into your pc, don’t hold your breath because nothing exciting is going to happen. (Unless of course you have made a very bad job of installing the card. Then you might see smoke and flames coming from your cherished/reviled PC or even, in extreme cases, find yourself moving down a tunnel towards a bright light.) However, once you have installed you SCSI card you will be able to attach any number of exciting devices to your pc. Although this is an opinion of Adaptecs AVA-2900 series of SCSI card, it is also a general review of SCSI. I have done this because as far as I can tell this is the first review at Ciao of a SCSI controller card. This seems to be a bit of an over sight to me as any number of SCSI devices have been reviewed, (such as the excellent Plextor external SCSI cd writer which... Read review

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Advantages: online capacity expansion, deals with hard disc problems better
Disadvantages: slow compared to software RAID

...recommend upgrading to current firmware and 2.16 storcon utl (both are on www.intel.com. There is a linux version of the 2.16 storcon, but it was hard to find!) With initial installation on a Gigabyte GA7 motherboard and Adaptec 2940AU SCSI controller, the problems with onboard intel BIOS / adaptec 2940AU and mobo BIOS reared it's ugly head. I could not for the life of me with all the PCI juggling, IRQ remapping and BIOS remapping options get it to boot with a Adaptec SCSI card and Intel RAID card. I asked a friend about his setup, and he had no problems (he was running a Intel serverboard with his SRCS14L) My problem was solved by removing SCSI from system completely and migrating to IDE bootup drives (which was such a pain on linux!) Current drivers are 2.05 which are included since the 2.4.19 kernel. As with all RAID controllers... Read review

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Advantages: Simply the Best Scsi Cdrw on the market
Disadvantages: None

...I have owned cd writers since the very first one that was released on the market, many years ago. I bought a Phillips 2X write, 2X read...Since then I have bought numerous cdr's and cdrw's, ranging from the cheap and nasty to the most expensive. I have the privilage to be a systems builder and I've fitted dozens of EIDE Cdrw's, but I have recommended Scsi drives as I always have used them myself. Scsi has always been a better option if you wanted reliability and speed, but I must say that EIDE drives are closing the gap slowly, but I still favour Scsi over EIDE. I think people have been put off buying Scsi systems because of all the tales of woe heard by people years ago trying to install a Scsi drive, ID adresses, Termination, Host Addresses etc,,, but the modern Scsi device, drives and cards are a lot easier to install now than... Read review

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Advantages: Stable, Quick, Good Support
Disadvantages: More expensive than IDE drives

...drive I can play MP3s, Surf the net, send emails and even play games using my other CD-ROM while burning CDs. The CDRW just keeps on burning and the Read Buffer never ever drops below 98% even durning simultaneous 3D games and CD-Burning. The main reason for the stability is the way SCSI works in comparison to IDE. A SCSI drive and card pretty much look after themselves, whereas an IDE Drive & bus need considerably more attention from the CPU. So if you want a quality CD burner that will never burn a coaster (unless you screw up the burn settings badly) go for a SCSI Yamaha (PLextor are meant to be better but I have never had the pleasure ;)... Read review

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Advantages: Super fast, Burn proof, attractive design.
Disadvantages: Requires Scsi card.

...but you also needed to buy a special and expensive SCSI controller card. The price and performance difference gap between SCSI has now fallen significantly (IDE is better SCSI is cheaper). You can now pick up a brand new SCSI card for £30 to £40, in particular adaptecs budget series, which I have also reviewed. You will need such a card if you buy this cdwriter! Installation was easy. The plextor 12/10/32S I have is an external SCSI drives so it plugs into the external port on the SCSI card, which was already installed. Start the pc, and it magically appears in windows. Dead easy. It was also necessary to install some cd writing software. In this case, the cd writer came bundled with the usual offerings, which installed and ran perfectly. One minor problem encountered was the SCSI cable that ran between the writer and PC. SCSI has been... Read review

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Advantages: Speed, 5 year warrenty
Disadvantages: Low capacity considering price

.... These controller cards typically come in PCI (32 bit) or PCI-X (64 bit) flavours. Some have the ability to be installed in either slots, but this will vary depending on the controller card purchased. An Adaptec 29160N works well with these drives and can be picked up second hand for around £30. For a good source on information regarding SCSI controller cards, vist Adaptecs website at www.adaptec.com. You may also need to consider a drive cooler as well, as these drives run hot due to their high rotational speeds. However, in my opinion this additional cost is well worth it. Whatever type of work you currently perform on you PC, it will boot faster, open applications quicker and generally feel more responsive. And if your system is still not fast enough, you can buy 2 or 3 drives, a RAID card and configure them as a stripped set which... Read review

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Advantages: Gigantic storage capacity, long shelf life for stored disks
Disadvantages: Not cheap, bit slow sometimes.

...The Panasonic LF-D201 is a SCSI DVD-RAM drive. Mmmm, I hear you say, what a bunch of lovely acronyms, if only I knew what they meant I might actually bother to read this article. Never fear all will be explained. SCSI is the way in which it connects to your computer, for the pros and cons of this method, e.g. compared to USB, see my opinion on Adaptec’s AVA-2904 SCSI controller card and to a lesser extent my opinion on the Plextor 12/10/32S SCSI cd writer. DVD-RAM is probably going to be the replacement for cd writers. It has an enormous capacity per DVD disk (up to 9.4 GB) and prices are starting to make it accessible to the likes of you and I. I have also discussed DVD-RAM and its pros and cons more extensively in my opinion on the older Panasonic LF-D103. Having covered the basics in earlier opinions, I can now... Read review

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Advantages: Good points. Obscenely easy way to rebuild a corrupted server.
Disadvantages: Bad points. Limited hardware and software support. Make sure your operating system can read all partitions.

...are able to do this, as can big transaction processing systems. Until now, however, it has been almost impossible for a standard PC to do so. There has never been BIOS support for sequential devices such as tape drives, and they can only function once drivers have been loaded later in the boot process. Consequently, the necessary, minimal disaster recovery operating system cannot be loaded and the restoration process cannot start. Installation of the tape drive and software is as easy as anything on NT can get. Yosemite TapeWare is provided in the box and proved to be a usable piece of back up software. The tape drive is a SCSI device we connected to an Adaptec 2940 SCSI card; it is also provided with a Multi-mode SCSI terminator block as well. This terminator detects whether the host bus adapter is SE or LVD and automatically provides... Read review

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Advantages: fast,simple,easy,good price
Disadvantages: none so far

...that match an internal drive, (you can purchase internal SCSI drives), meaning if you buy a good CD-Writer a full disk may only take 5 minutes for the whole thing! But as usual you don’t get anything for nothing. A USB drive on average is about £200, and a SCSI £300 - £400. And also note that a SCSI drive requires another card for your PC, meaning you STILL have to open it up. So I went for USB, my Hp CD Writer + 8930e, cost £190 of my savings, not a fortune compared to the standard internal drives. The installation was so easy, even a novice could understand it, the manual told you precisely what you have to do. Unpack the drive, plug in the power cable, connect to your PC, and switch it on. And then a message in Win98 is displayed, asking for your supplied installation disks. That is what really made this purchase a result for me... Read review

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