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

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

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 :-) ).

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 :-) ).

I've had mixed luck with Maxtor SCSI (I had a bunch of MXT-XT1240S ... nice
drive, but they eventually all die in the same way..... one day you turn them
off... then they either have a difficult time spinning up the platters, or
they simply can't)..... was happy when they stopped making SCSI.... then
I got really dissapointed when they bought Quantum (because I've had good
luck with their drives so far.... hope Maxtor doesn't ruin that).

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've always avoided Hitachi.... the only Hitachi experience I had showed
the company had no warranty program available to end users... I didn't like
that....

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 ! :-)

Still have a lot of old interface drives... including 4 Micropolis
300 meg ESDI drives in a disk case with an Emulex MD25 SCSI-ESDI bridge
controller.... I don't use it anymore but it still works.... I had very
good luck with 5.25" Micropolis drives (300 and 600 meg).

Well, enough rambling...

-- Curt

>Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 22:14:26 -0500
>From: Kevin <kevin at mpcf.com>
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] SCSI drive for sale at buy.com
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
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>True, i never had good luck with Micropolis drives.  I used to
>use them on a PVR card years ago and i was always having to
>have them replaced.  At least they had good customer service.
>
>/KRM
>
>On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 23:33:39 -0400
>Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
>
>> > I think every drive manufacturer has put out bad
>> > batches now and again.
>> 
>> Yes, but some brands are consistently bad, and some
>> consistently good.
>
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