Now hard drives too. Re: Modern floppy disk question...

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Now hard drives too. Re: Modern floppy disk question...
>   From: Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com>
>   Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 18:38:52 -0400
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>>>>>> "Allison" == Allison  <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> writes:
>
> Allison> Ive found anything .0 is suspect and the latest and greatest
> Allison> HD of the max size is susceptable.
>
>We've found that this is not necessarily true.  
>
>Also, I don't think you can ever buy anything else.  Drive generations
>follow one another very quickly, and manufacturers only sell the
>latest generation, whatever that is any particular quarter.  A smaller
>than max size drive is either the max size of the previous generation,
>or simply a drive with fewer platters and heads than the max currently
>available.

Well I"ve had too many bad experiences.  I was sole IT for a small 
company for 5 years and down time was not a condition that was acceptable.
So when the latest and greatest came out I was 6 months to a years behind
it.  Getting drives one or even three generatiosn back as NOS was not a 
problem.  That was easy is that by 6 months to a year you were hearing what
was problematic or unusually good.  Also by then I could get a better price
and our needs never grew as fast as they new tech could produce so space
was always in excess.

Notable really bad drives.

 St251 40mb runs hot, dies early.

 Wren 3.5" half height. Had 6 given to me working
 all died within a year save one.

 Various Prodrives, up and down QA.

 various Segate IDE, up and down QA. If it was 
 good after a year it would likely last well past the 
 time it was too small.

 WD during the time of the 300-500mb drives, good 
 drive design, bad QC. Those that failed were early life
 those that didn't corak early still work.

 Segate 3.2gb IDE first version, really bad 80% failure in
 90 days. Whole lot returned for -A version.

 Maxtor 9gb scsi, failure rate 50% per year, sample 16 drives
 in use and warrenty replacements for not less than 4 every 
 6 months.  After two years ALL 16 replaced with seagate 37GB no
 failures at 1.5 years.
 
 

Noteably good drives:

 St225 I have a bunch and they are workhorse.
 
 Quantum D540 31mb I have 14 of them all with 5+ YEARS 
 runtime all still running.
 
 Maxtor 2190 (mfm 153mb aka RD54).

 Fujitsu 500mb IDE 
 
 Toshiba 500mb 2.5" IDE, unbreakable.

 Various Segate 3.2GB 32011A was good, non A was bad.
 WD 4.3GB IDE a time tested winner. cheap too.

 Seagate 2600020A 60GB IDE, put 20 in service and
 All still running at 2years in business desktop use.


 DEC RZ55 680mb 5" full height scsi. Ihave 14 of them
 in use that were pulls and still work fine after years of use.

 Seagate 1gb SCSI
 Segate Baracudas 1gb -> 4.3 noisy but reliable.



 Plenty of others as well.


Allison