Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 08:41:50 -0700 (PDT) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Upgrade to my machine Message-ID: <199508141541.IAA13939@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> In-Reply-To: <199508141413.XAA21571@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Aug 14, 95 11:43:42 pm
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[CC: reset to -hardware, it was getting rather long!] > Rodney W. Grimes stands accused of saying: > > > Micropolis have been around for a _long_ time; anyone remember the DEC RD53? > > > Whilst that wasn't a particularly good disk, they have a really solid > > > reputation, and (here at least) they offer a 5-year warranty on most of > > > their disks. > > > Sure, they have made a lemon or two, but it is really hard for me to > > come up with specific model numbers, whilst I can rattle off a list > > so long of lemon seagates it is sickning. > > Hmm. The RD53 (1335?) was a lemon 8) as was the 1355 (wedge servo anyone?), AH, so there is more than one person who played with 135x series drives. I was working for Rolm Milspec at that time, and we where trying to qualify drives, we had lots of fun dropping them, and cooking them, and freezing them. By and far, micropolis stood up to this type of ``abuse'' better than anyone, except we keep have this fun little problem with the drives :-) > and in fact anything in that family is worth avoiding (and easy at that > age), but I'd agree wholeheartedly with you on their dependability; if > anecdotal evidence is anything - had a client recently having odd SCSI > problems (bus lockups and timeouts mostly), initially we suspected cables > /termination (and that was part of the problem), but the real cause was a > 1G Micropolis disk (2112?) in a plastic case with a dead fan. The case was > so hot I left fingerprints in it when I tried to pick it up; the drive > was shifted to a new case & ran for 6 months nonstop afterwards. (It's > been replaced by a RAID array) :-). See above!! And I mean we _COOKED_ them, 50 degree C environmental chambers for 100 hours operational. [Not quite the rigid 38510/883B specs of 125 degrees C, but then no disk drive could run at that tempature then, and as far as I know now.] > > Conner is one supplier I won't touch on the disk drive market. They have > > been given some rave reviews, but given there target is and always has > > been the lowest dollar end of the market it makes me wonder where they > > cut the corners. > > Reviews don't count for much, to be honest. I have yet to read much in > the industry press around here that was objective, factual, readable or > even comestible. :-) > > Given that I have _very_ long and good experiences with Quantum (who now > > owns DEC's drive division, which I have no problems with either) and > > Quantum had a really bad run around here a few years ago, but I suspect > that this was more a case of product dumping than anything else. Either > way, it's still hard to sell a Quantum into many serious shops around > town. Quantum has had several problems in the past with defect units being slipped out there back doors, labeled, and sold. I personally went through this with Quantum trying to file a warranty claim against a drive that died 2 weeks into operation. Turns out the serial number was never regestered as a ``shipped'' unit, and 3 QA stamps where missing from the drive. I worked with Quantum to back track from the source I obtained the drive from to the leak that was slipping them out the back door. For my efferts Quantum awarded me a free replacement drive with full 5 year warranty on it. That drive is still running just fine today some 3 years latter. I suspect this back door leak has caused Quantum some bad press in places, one of them being southern california where literally 1000's of these units where being sold off as new drives with supposed full warranties. Since then I have been very very carefull about who I will buy a Quantum disk from. And for that mater _any_ disk. I have channels into Quantum that I can check the validity of any serial number with a phone call now, and do so before purchasing a Quantum disk from anyone other than the listed official Quantum distributors. I have run accross several OEM drives which only carry a 2 or 3 year warranty on the grey market. > > The other drive vendor I do use is Fujitsu, and other than the Super Eagle, > > they have done them selves very little harm with lemon drives going to mass > > market (I was involved in a lot of alpha drive testing, and I know of a few > > that never saw a manufacturing pilot run :-)). > > Hey! The only problems I ever met with the SE's were the fans in the front > (which used to go noisy after 6 weeks, and fail a few months later) (we are > referring to the 19" rack units? 8) Well, we where one of the first 100 site installations of SE's, and we where replacing them at about 1 out of 5 every 30 days for the first 6 months. After that they finally got the things to run reliably. These where all head crash and/or flacking media related problems. Our machine room was so noisy I doubt that we would have noticed a cooling fan going bad :-). Yes, we are talking about 14" SMD disks in 19" rack mountable enclosures, 689MB capacity, 1.2MB/sec data transfer rates. > > They've been hard to get around here for a while - it's good to know they're > worth pursuing. > I use them as a point solution at the 1G mark, as Quantum obsoleted the 1080S drive, and the replacement has no place near the performance. I would rather sell the Micropolis drive, but price is a bit of an issue here with my customers :-(. > > Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com > > Thanks for the advice, Rod - it's useful for those of 'following in your > footsteps' so to speak 8) :-). As with any advice, always remeber to take it with a grain of salt, and what might be true today, can quite rapidly become false tomarrow! -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation Company Reliable computers for FreeBSD
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