External Scssi hard drive

I've read on this board that sometimes pci bus gets too busy.. If I add a scssi drive, I have to use a PCI card, will that add to the PCI bus busy problem? Just got into the digi 001 system so I am really new to this. Have a p4 1.7 ghz dell optiplex.

tonicband, Adding a SCSI card will neither make your PCI bus more busy or less busy. It should be the same busy... (!) Think of it this way - PTLE needs to read from *A* disk or write to *A* disk. It doesn't matter whether that disk is and ATA-100 drive, a SCSI drive or a 1394 drive. In all cases the data has to go across the bus to get to the drive. The real issue is how effeciently the data gets across. Does the driver move the data in well sized packets? Does the device driver require little CPU overhead? These are the things that probably make the biggest difference. I hope this helps a bit. Mark

Mark, Thanks for the help.. could you recomend an efficient drive? Or Scsi card or driver.. Thanks again..

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR> Adding a SCSI card will neither make your PCI bus more busy or less busy. It should be the same busy... (!) <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> actually, its been shown that the newer, high performance scsi cards cause pci bandwidth problems with PT. the solution is to limit the bandwidth via the scsi driver or get an older card....

tonicband, I can't recommend a good SCSI card, unfortunately. I don't have much home-type experience with them. I'm using a dual SCSI configuration in a department server, but you don't want that sort of noise and what not here. Actually, 1394 disks might be a good solution if you're truly interested in using external drives. Anything external is going to add some cost ($100?) to your system, but they are easy to move from system to system, the performance seems to be fine. I'm using them all the time now for my audio drive, and I think Da BaSsTaRd is also. Other than a 1394 card in your system you don't have to do anything internal. With the ATA solution you have to mess with drive cables and maybe add a ATA controller if your MOBO doesn't have a extra controller. You can also hang a CD-RW drive out there, as well as a scanner, web-cam or DV/camcorder. Pretty flexible. Just a though. Good luck, Mark

Thanks for the info...Much appreciated