Facts to Know All About SCSI Drives

SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. The set of hard drives that are called SCSI drives refer to a set of parallel interface standards that are developed by the American National Standards Institute. SCSI can be applied to several devices like printers and SCSI flash drives.  The benefit with SCSI drives is that they can be supported by all major operating systems.

So here are some important tidbits of info on SCSI flash drives:

 

1.      A Brief History

 

Shugart Associate Interface System (SAIS) can be seen as the parent system that preceded SCSI. It was conceived and developed by a team guided by Larry Boucher from Shugart Associates. At that time, this company was a leading floppy disk drive manufacturer. Boucher developed his system after he founded Adaptec, a manufacturer of bus adapters. The speed and cable length of SCSI on drives are limited mainly because of the fact that SCSI makes use of a low voltage differential bus (LVD). This involves the transmission of data through the difference in voltagesin wires.

 

2.      Working

 

The SCSI interfaces function internally from the system and help in connecting different types of hardware devices. These devices are connected directly to a motherboard or even a storage controller card. Apart from this, external connections are also available with SCSI drives. They can be connected usually to an external port on the storage controller card with a cable. There is also a memory chip within the controller,and this holds the SCSI BIOS (Basic Input Output System). This integrated software helps in connecting to other devices.

 

3.      Versions

 

SCSI 1 was the first version to be used on a disk drive. It was launched by ANSI in the year 1986 and had a 5 MBps transfer speed which had a capacity to connect eight devices with a cable (maximum length of 6 meters). Over the years, many updates and new versions have come up with the interface. The latest entrant in the series is a 16-bit Ultra 640 (Fast 320) SCSI. This was first launched in 2003 with a transfer speed of 640 MBps. This could connect 16 devices at one go with a cable of a maximum length of 12 meters. Wide Ultra 2 SCSI and Fast SC SI 2 are other variants that are popular in the market.

 

4.      Variety in Technologies of SCSI drives

 

There is a wide variety of SCSI drives that can support a wide variety of cable lengths, speeds, number of devices to be attached to one cable. This is quite evident from the history of SCSI mentioned above which shows how the number of devices and cable length have changed over the decades. A fast SCIS has a speed of 10 MBps and can connect 8 devices. You can up your game with a Fast Wide SCSI that has a speed of 20 MBps and can instead connect 16 devices.

 

So the above-mentioned were a few basic details that would summarize SCSI drives for you. They are convenient interfaces with a trusted speed and bandwidth.