Title says it all: Is anyone using SCSI drives with a recent model Mac? I have a SCSI board in my G4 that I put in originally so that I could transfer files out of my old Power Computing clone when I upgraded. Currently I'm not using it (the old SCSI drive was only 300 MB; it's not worth keeping connected). I guess most people use FireWire for external drives these days, but I'm a bit leery of that since I use a FireWire audio interface (MOTU 828). I'm needing an external drive to take up the overflow from my internal drive to and serve as an archive, something on the order of 200 GB. Would it be worth my while to look for a SCSI drive, or should I forget it and stick to FireWire drives?

You can install another internal IDE hard drive in your G4 if you need more HD space. For archiving a FW external is the way to go.

SCSI drives are more expensive and if they propose a faster service, the toll to do so is high, usually you'll encounter only these system in some high end markets like video editing for exemple. Not because it's not worth, just because a RAID SATA or a RAID IDE for exemple are way less expensive and enough for most uses in audio.

Like LePetit said, they are use in high end video editing markets, but they still are being used for servers. Lots of servers tend to use them for different RAID configurations which include: Self Healing, Faster writing for backups, faster reading for backups, and other things. I think that's what they are used for? I read a neat article on it once and it was very informative. But right now it seems the industry standard is a Firewire hard drive.

Be ware that firewire drives usbdrives and serial ata drives and ide parallell drives
are usually the same harddrives.
Firewire, usb, sata & pata are just different protocols/buses and connectors -
you use the same type of drive mechanisms.

However SCSI-drives are different:
1: Scsi is another protocol/connector and bus standard
much smarter than those above,
(tagged command queing & other mumbo jumbo)

2: The hardware IS different. The most important differenc is the mounting
of the spindle. In a scsi-drive the rotating spindle is mounted in TWO
ball-bearings one at the bottom - one at the top.
Hence the 10.000 and 15.000 rpm scsi-drives.

In a ata/ide -- sata/ide drive the rotating spindle is only mounted
in ONE ball bearing at the bottom.

This have a huge effect on price and MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
among other things. Thats why scsi-raid is commonly used in mission critical contexts

Cheers: Dixiechicken