[rescue] Re: Drive Reliability (was SCSI drive for sale at buy.com)

Fri Apr 25 11:48:31 CDT 2003

I'm not sure where Micropolis went wrong...  when I first started getting
into "higher" capacity drives (300 to 600 meg), I swore by Micropolis (these
were SCSI drives for the curious).  They were built like "black bricks", and
I have yet to have one fail (although I currently don't have any in service,
but may use a 600 in my Sun2/120 when I bring it back to life).  They were
some of the most reliable drives I used in the day.  That's when CDC/Imprimis/
Seagate 327 Meg full heights would up and die (although they did give pretty
long service life... but the Micropolis drives kept going).

I worked at Sun at the time, and a hardware guy I talked to said something
about track drift/correction problems on the 327s (CDC/Imprimis/Seagate)
due to the fact that they put the "Tracking head/platter" on one end of the
platter stack rather than the middle... causing eventual track drift
beyond tolerance on the other end of the platter stack....  truth ? fiction ?
Don't know...

>From what I heard Micropolis started going down hill around the time of the
1991 9 Gig drive and beyond.... with some occasional good models mixed in
with all the junk.

Brings back so many memories.... like the one where I thought a 68 meg
and 327 meg drive were all I'd ever need :-) ... now I have a 100 Gig
fileserver damn near full :-)

-- Curt

>Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 11:44:12 -0400
>From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>To: "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." <rescue at hawkmountain.net>, The Rescue List 
<rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Re: Drive Reliability (was SCSI drive for sale at 
buy.com)
>User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i
>
>On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 10:53:03AM -0400, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
>
>> As I understand it Micropolis really made a lot of crap in the end of
>> their existence.  The newest Micropolis drive I have is a Tomohawk, and
>> I don't use it often... it does work OK though.  The 5.25" full height
>> 9 gig drive (1991) I have been told is a doorstop waighting to happen
>> (the one I have already is a doorstop :-) ).
>
>At one shop where I worked we used to make bets on when a Micropolis
>drive died.  None made it past 2 weeks.
>
>I heard that they were actually assembling drives in plain offices, just
>to cram enough out the door to keep from going bankrupt, at one point
>near the end.
>
>I opened up some of the drives, and they looked pretty bad.  Some parts
>looked old, and one was missing its filters.
>
>> I've had good luck with Seagates and Quantums.  I've had limited experience
>> with IBM drives, but have had no problems so far.  I also have limited
>> experience with the WD enterprise SCSI drives (9 gig), but so far they have
>> worked happily (and still have a decent amount of warranty left :-) ).
>
>WD enterprise... I suppose they could be OK.  I'm just really wary of
>them.  I have a WD IDE drive right now, 20GB, and it seems fine but I
>worry about it.
>
>Some WD drives seem to be fine, which indicates inconsistent QA/QC or
>something like that.
>
>> I've had mixed luck with Maxtor SCSI (I had a bunch of MXT-XT1240S ... nice
>
>Maxtor... just say no...
>
>> I have had pretty good luck with Fujitsu as well, and have found their
>> warranty replacement program even replaces OEM drives (at least the one
>> or two I warranteed).... which the other vendors immediately know the drive
>> as OEM and say "NO".
>
>I just got some Fujis after people assured me they are good.  Lot's of
>them, brand new, cheap on ebay.  Some of them are set up for raid
>so you have to take them out of their raid sleds, but that's not a big
>deal.
>
>A friend of mine got bunch of new drives for some HP raid.  He turned
>around and sold the sleds for more than he paid for sled+drive.
>
>> Somewhere I have some old CMI, Tulin, and Rhodime drives, along with CDC
>> and Imprimis as well....  most are MFM (I think the Rhodime drives I have
>> are SCSI).  Ah... the memories.... my first hard drive was a ST225... I
>> thought it was great ! :-)
>
>I have a pair of 6-7 year old Seagate Hawk drives, 4GB SCA.  They have
>been running 24/7.  The last time I checked, they had no remapped
>sectors yet.
>
>I've been wondering how long they'll last.
>
>
>-- 
>UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza____________________s h a n n o n at wido !SPAM maker.com
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