[K12OSN] server hard drives: SCSI or SATA?

[Chuck Kollars]

I'm pricing hardware for a new file server for our combined middle/high school, and I've notice that SATA hard drives are much much much cheaper than SCSI hard drives.

The conventional wisdom used to be that SCSI was preferred for file servers because the drives were quite a bit more reliable. BUT somebody told me the mechanical parts of all hard drives are now exactly the same (only one manufacturing line) and only the interface electronics are different.

- Are SCSI drives really worth the additional cost?
- Why do most servers still prefer to configure SCSI?
- If only the electronics are different, why are very high speed (10,000rpm and above) drives almost always SCSI?
- How could I arrange to use SATA drives yet get the very high reliability I need?


thanks!
--
Chuck Kollars