wb1j+@andrew.cmu.edu (William M. Bumgarner) (07/25/89)
I have had personal experience with two Microtech R45 drives-- different ones in different places. The first has never had a problem. The other arrived dead, was shipped back to the company, no problem was found, and was thus shipped back and we have had no problem with it yet. The R45 is a solid piece of construction, but as with any Sysquest based drive, it isn't the drive, but the software that makes the difference. The MicroTech software is very solid, and appears to be bug-free... (the only problem we have found is that it allows you to initialize a disc with 0 interleave-- just what exactly happens, we don't know). The R45 INIT that comes with the drive works fine, and hasn't caused any known problems. I havent othered using the back-up software that came with the drive (we opted for FastBack II-- an excellent piece of software that I would highly recommend). I did have a look at the MacTree (or something similar) software that came with the drive-- it looks like an interesting alternative to the finder. As a backup system or primary drive, I would highly recommend the R45. As a company, Microtech has been very helpful and supportive, and there products (at least the R45) seem to be very solid. The one minor downfall is that the end-user has to pay for all shipping for repairs whether or not the unit is under warranty... Call for pricing info-- they seem to cut good deals to educational and developer oriented sites. b.bum wb1j+@andrew.cmu.edu BTW: The R45 local to this site is used almost exclusively as a backup device-- very very fast, convenient and cost-effective. Disclaimer: I'm just a satisfied customer with no connections to Microtech.
jg2f+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jude Anand George) (07/26/89)
> Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.sys.mac: 25-Jul-89 Microtech (opinion of, > was:.. William M. Bumgarner@and (1689) > I have had personal experience with two Microtech R45 drives-- different > ones in different places. > The first has never had a problem. > The other arrived dead, was shipped back to the company, no problem was > found, and was thus shipped back and we have had no problem with it yet. Amazing! Precisely the same thing happened to me. I ordered a Microtech R45 and found it DOA. When I sent it back, they claimed (vehemently!) thet they could find nothing wrong with it. When I got it back, it worked fine. Apart from this, I strongly recommend this drive. It's cheap (I managed to haggle the salesman down to ** $850 ** from $1099, including 1 cartridge. Nothing traded in. I ordered over the phone, directly from Microtech), it's silent, and very fast. They quote spin-up and spin-down times of 20 and 10 seconds, respectively, but I find them to be more like 7 and 5 seconds on a half-full disk. It's also the only Syquest with a 2 year warranty. They sell extra cartridges for $85 each. Their tech support people are reasonably knowledgeable, and are willing to spend a lot of time with you on the phone. > The one minor downfall is that the end-user has to pay for all shipping > for > repairs whether or not the unit is under warranty... I only had to pay one-way shipping; they didn't charge me for the "repairs" (or whatever they did!) or for shipping it back UPS 2nd Day. > Disclaimer: I'm just a satisfied customer with no connections to > Microtech. Ditto. Jude George jg2f+@andrew.cmu.edu