SCSI adapter/controller card

[f012t12]

I've read up (not much) on some posts on having RAID setups.

Presumably meaning you have an array of less expensive disks running simultaneously.

What I've heard is that it only improves loading speed of programs and files in general...

What makes me curious is that somewhere I heard that SCSI hard disks can right directly to memory? What exactly does this mean?

Would this improve performance in different ways? If so, would it be worth buying three cheap SCSI 18.4GB 10,000rpm and hooking them up into a controller card?

As of now, I'm running a maxtor 5,400 rpm 60GB HD.

Suggestions?

I mean, it may be a waste of time considering the fact that I'm not hosting any servers.... However, I'd just like to know about the SCSI capabilities (possibilities).

[Xaotic]

The top two sticky's in this section will likely answer most of your questions.

True RAIDs, not RAID-0, are usually slower and consume part of your disk space for parity information. For performance, RAID-0 is good but adds risk of data loss if a single drive dies.

Both SCSI and IDE controllers operate in DMA, direct memory access, modes on any modern mainboard.

I wouldn't recommend cheap SCSI drives for an array. The newer series have termendous advantages and depending on the configuration, older drives may perform worse than IDE.

Recommendation: get a 7200RPM 8MB cache IDE drive if you have PATA interfaces, a 7200RPM or Raptor 10K drive if you have SATA, or if you have a bunch of cash, get a 15K SCSI drive controller cable and terminator to use as a boot drive.