Why SCSI over IDE/SATA? The performance overhead of SCSI over IDE comes from structure of the bus, not the drive. The nature of the SCSI bus allows it much better performance when doing data hungry tasks such as multi-tasking. The SCSI bus controller is capable of controlling the drives without any work by the processor. Also, all drives on a SCSI chain are cable of operating at the same time. With IDE, one is limited to two drives in a chain, and these drives cannot work at the same time. In essence, they must "take turns".

A Ford Escort will get you to work just as fast as a Volvo station wagon, but which would you rather go on vacation in? Which would you rather be in if an accident occurs? If your computer is nothing more than a machine that's only purpose is to perform a certain set of tasks, and you don't expect to want any more out of it, IDE is probably for you. On the other hand, if you enjoy computing and are always looking for more things your computer can do for you, SCSI will help enhance the experience for you. You won't regret the investment.

That said, the Maxtor Atlas 15K 8C036J0 series is a great drive but it's been surpassed by IDE and SATA drives lately in terms of raw transfer speed.

here's a complete review from http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200304/200304068C073x0_1.html

here's the run down:
5.7ms average read time real-world
73.7 mB/sec to 55.6 MB/sec transfer rate real-world

However, like I said above any SCSI drive will multitask far better than a IDE/SATA, even when the IDE/SATA drives appear faster in benchmarks.

Recommended: Yes