SCSI On PC

Hai


Hard drives do not run at their max rated speed all the time.
160 and 320mb/sec is the max BURST data transfer speed (so is e.g. 133mb/sec for IDE drives, and 150 or 300mb/sec for SATA drives). It can only be used for short periods of time - how long depends directly on the size of the ram cache (buffer) built into the drive - if the drive continues to be accessed, the ram cache is no longer used and the drive reverts to it's much slower sustained data transfer rate - e.g. fastest I've seen is 55mb/sec on recent drives. When you are transfering large files, most of the time the drive is running at the slower sustained rate. A drive runs no faster than the sustained data transfer rate much of the time.

Whatever the SCSI controller is capable of, it can't run the SCSI drive any faster than the max burst speed the drive is capable of.

SCSI drives are often nearly identical to IDE drives made by the same maker - the only difference is it has an additional SCSI related chip and a SCSI connector instead of an IDE one. SCSI specs in theory are much better than those for IDE drives, but in the real world there isn't much performance difference between a SCSI drive and a nearly identical IDE drive model made at the same time by the same maker.
If you can find a suitable used SCSI card for a cheap price, that's a viable option.
BUT if you have to buy a NEW SCSI card to use this drive on your computer, that's not cost effective. SATA drives perform better in real life, and your mboard probably supports SATA-2 drives, capable of 300mb/sec burst speeds. A new SATA-2 drive may cost you less than a new SCSI card.