berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (07/13/88)
An ST-251 will work, but it isn't as good a drive as the ST4038. I'm
not familiar with the symptom "going south", but if you can be more
explicit, I might be able to help more.
Mike Berger
Department of Statistics
Science, Technology, and Society
University of Illinois
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu
{ihnp4 | convex | pur-ee}!uiucuxc!clio!bergerkarl@ddsw1.UUCP (Karl Denninger) (07/15/88)
In article <16800326@clio> berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu writes: > >An ST-251 will work, but it isn't as good a drive as the ST4038. I'm >not familiar with the symptom "going south", but if you can be more >explicit, I might be able to help more. I disagree. Having had three ST4051's here, a couple of 4038's, as well as selling the ST251 series (both 251-0 and 251-1), here's our record: o 2 ST4051's - One dead within 6 months of purchase Second died two months later REPLACEMENT for #1 lasted one week. -- End of ST4051's! -- o 2 ST4038's - Both died; one has been refurbished and is working ok as of this time... Second was scrapped. o 1 ST4096 - Is now giving intermittent recalibrates (once a day or so without warning). It'll probably fail within a couple of months. This unit is 6 months old. o ~ 25 ST251's - A single bad unit. All the remainder are in daily use at our customer sites without a single failure. These drives date back over a year in many cases, and not a single one has failed in the field. The one dead unit we had was DOA -- failed during burn-in here. We use these drives in UNIX and XENIX machines (as well as DOS boxes) where they get the living bejessus beat out of the stepper motors -- and we've never had a problem. Note that newer ST251's are often the 28ms variety, although many are not marked that way (they apparently failed 28ms by a millisecond or so and are labelled as the 40ms units). These are discernable by a different stepper motor (visible from the outside) as well as a very distinct power-on recalibrate sequence. The ST4xxx series drives all seem to fail in the electronics department rather than internals.... and it's usually heat related (ie: cold they work fine, an hour later they fail after heating up to operating temperature). If you're going to use a full-height Seagate, make darn sure you have plenty of cool air flowing over the drive or it'll burn up and die. -- Karl Denninger (ddsw1!karl) Data: (312) 566-8912, Voice: (312) 566-8910 Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality solutions at a fair price"