ecarroll@vax1.tcd.ie (04/06/90)
In article <606@galadriel.bt.co.uk>, stevep@galadriel.bt.co.uk (Steve Paine) writes: > Could someone please tell me how solid the A590 is. > > I intend to flight case my A500/590 for occasional transportation. Assuming > I park the drive and take a reasonable amount of care, what extra precautions > can I take to avoid data loss (besides backing up). Would the drive stand up > to being on its side for some time. (While I carry it 'suitcase' style.) > > Any personal experience / advice would be a great help. > A friend's employer dropped an A590 on the ground from a height of around one foot or so last week (no, he wasn't doing some sort of experiment, it was accidental :-) There was a good amount of data on it (not backed up of course, in the best tradition of stories like this) and it all survived. The heads hadn't even been parked. Needless to say, he was VERY relieved (as was my friend, who would have had to rebuild the whole system for him!). I don't know how typical this is, but it certainly seems to indicate the A590 is fairly sturdy. Obviously, parking the heads is an excellent idea before moving. > By the way, it is a western digital drive. (Is it true that these > have more storage capacity than some of the other drives found in a590s?) The Epson drive in early A590's has 41616 blocks available, whereas the Western Digital drive has 42228. Hence, you get an additional 612 blocks (306K). Not much you might think, but wait until your hard disk is 100% full... I've no idea if any other drives have been used in the A590, and what their capacities might be. -- Eddy Carroll ----* Genuine MUD Wizard | "You haven't lived until INTER: ecarroll@vax1.tcd.ie | you've died in MUD!" UUCP: {..uunet}!mcvax!ukc!vax1.tcd.ie!ecarroll | -- Richard Bartle