>>Guys, speaking from experience, an 800MB (IDE, I presume) drive has 16ms access time. Even a 1.6MB IDE has only 10ms access at best vs. a SCSI drive of any decent size sporting 8ms access time and 40mbps throughput. If these queries are being built on local drive tempfiles on a BNC 10base T network, I can assure you that Win95 or Netware 4.1 will bog down with this system. The processor speed and memory contributes somewhat to this problem but beefing up this dinosaur to 32 meg will only give her modest improvement in performance.
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>>But then I guess you guys were saying that in a lot fewer words.(s)
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>Bill
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>Access time is the small part. The burst transfer rate on those older drives is much smaller then the newer ones.
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>WD 850 == 12 MB transfer @ 4500 RMM
>WD 1600 == 16 MB Transfer @ 5400 RPM
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>So your looking at a 30% throughput increase. And that is just in the drive transfer. There is much more that comes into play.
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>I also find memory a very big plus, not a small plus because it prevents disk swapping.
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>HTH,
>Tom

Tom,

I guess we are saying the same thing but coming from different angles. The difference between SCSI server tech. vs. IDE tech boils down to the difference in throughput. As far as memory is concerned, I don't know that I would disagree with your analysis as it certainly applies to a Win95 workstation's speeds when any amount of multitasking is being performed. However in an actual application, I upgraded an IDE server from 16 MB to 48MB of memory and had very little change in throughput when more than 4 (yes I mean 4) workstations got into any simultaneous data moving activity between the server and the client. However, when I changed out the disk drives to SCSI, it was like opening a highway from 2 lanes to 6 lanes. No problem. The one thing I didn't do was try the new drives with only 16MB on the server. (I guess I my penchant for research was overcome with my desire to "move on") so memory may be just as important.

Appreciate your insight.

Bill