Tom,
This is a story that is evolving. Anyone else use StorageReview? Great
comprehensive drive benchmarks:
http://www.storagereview.com/
Check the comparisons between 15K RPM SCSI drives and the 2004 Western
Digital 10K RPM SATA (Raptor) drives. The Raptors are an interesting hybrid
of SCSI-related tech and desktop tech, and were some of the first drives
with SCSI-like command queuing TCQ/NCQ.
I think the last remaining issue in moving to SATA for all enterprise use is
the lack of decent SATA controllers, though 3Ware (http://www.3ware.com) is
getting there:
http://www.3ware.com/link/pdf/Serial-ATA.pdf
http://www.3ware.com/products/benchmarks_sata.asp
- Luke