kaled - 12:51 am on Feb 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

Google may use "consumer grade" components, but I think describing them as "consumer grade boxes" is misleading. I doubt that they have thousands of desktop PCs sitting on benches, I rather suspect they have hundreds of cabinets with dozens of boards/drives in each (per data center). Also, I imagine their boards each have four interfaces rather than two (supporting a maximum of eight drives).

SCSI hasn't offered any significant performance advantages (over ATA) for a very long time - at least ten years. Manufacturers have traditionally sold their newest/largest drives as SCSI only (at a price premium) simply to milk the gullible.

Gomvents, unless they sponsor the event, I don't think either of the manufacturers you mention is ever likely to win an award for reliability.

Kaled.