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

Fri Apr 25 10:44:12 CDT 2003

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.

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