david@jc3b21.UUCP (David Quarles) (03/20/89)
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THE FOLLOWING IS THE SUMMARY OF RESPONSES I SAID I'D DO IF THERE WAS
SUFFICIENT RESPONSE. I AM KINDA NEW AT THIS 'NET' STUFF AND AM GLAD TO
SAY THAT I SERIOUSLY UNDERESTIMATED THE RESPONSE I'D GET. I AM PLEASED
TO SAY THAT MUCH EMAIL AND SOME POSTING TOOK PLACE.
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| T h a n k s t o a l l |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
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NOTE: I did no editing (except for a couple spelling errors). These
statements are of the experiences of the respondents, which after
all is what we shoppers want to hear (the good AND bad), RIGHT ??
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I am the one selling the Jasmine DD50. As it happens, I am not
upgrading. I sold my mac several months ago, and I am just now
selling my disk drive. The reason is that I used to program it, but
now I am too busy doing UN*X stuff. I will make you a recommendation
anyway: Jasmine. I was very happy with mine. They make big disks.
One general bit of advice: wait until after the MacWorld Expo in SF.
There will undoubtedly be new releases and price reductions on the old
gear. Good Luck,
Scott
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In my experience Rodime drives are pretty good. You may want to
look into Jasmine drives as well. They are very good.
All of those companies are well known (Miniscribe, and CMS too).
$1275 is a very good price for 160Megs indeed!!!! I haven't
ever seen so much for so little myself, but it is not the name
that is cheap. Miniscibe is a very good company for HDs.
I say go for it! Just be sure you fill out the Waranty right away,
and you can't go wrong.
Seek time might be slow, but for 160Meg at that price!!??
SHIT! Have fun with it! I myself have a 20Meg, and run out of room
every day... Where did you see this price... sounds inviting!
Mark L
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I have an INTERNAL Rodime 140 MB disk for my Mac II. It works very well
(and has since I got it in July). The formatted capacity is 138,677K. It
is fairly speedy (28 ms access, about as fast as the old Quantum Q280
80 MB disk, though not as fast as the new 40 or 80 MB Quantum 3.5" hard
disks). I have seen MacLand (advertises in MacUser) list them for about
$1100 or so for the internal. I have no problems with mine and would buy
it again (actually, two of them!).
Robert
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I have been using a Seagate 277N, 60 meg nominal, which I put in an
AppleHive box, for about three months. The drive is fine. The company I bought
it from was Hard Drives International. They now advertise the same drive
in a box with cables and software for $589. I have no hesitation recommending it.
They claim to be the largest mail order hard drive dealer. They have free tech
support. Seagate has free tech support. I have used Seagates support in solving
a problem I had with third party software. They were very obliging. They even
use an 800 number.
Yes, the ST277N has a somewhat slower track to track access time than others
(40ms), but depending upon the way you use the drive, transfer times may be
more important and these are decent. I am using a Plus. The SE will do better
because of its smaller optimal sector interleave. My ST277N is faster in
practice than both the FX20 and the Photon 30 at work.
One more point. Most boxes will hold two drives, and most power supplies will
handle two. If you were to put an additional ST277N in your box ($450) more,
you would have the best meg/buck I have seen.
Stan Armstrong.
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I ordered a 62mb ST277n hard drive from Hard Drives International in
Arazona, and an Apple Hive chassies (30 watts and a fan) from TULIN
corp (sorry, both addresses and phone numbers are locked in a lab that
I can't get into, as there is something wrong with the lock...) and
it went together in 15 minutes. If you're at all mechanicaly inclined,
can read english, and can twist a screwdriver, you can make your own hard
drive for a total cost of (get this) 450 for the drive, 200 for the chassies
and assorted cables (big overestemation, probably more like $160) so you've
got a grand max total of about $650 american for 62 megs. Sounds like a
bargan to me!
There's a tweak with RESEDIT, to modify the instaler program on the Mac
to recognize the drive. I'll send you this info if you decide to go this
route.
Best of luck! (it works fine for me, and I've been carting it back and forth
to school in -20 deg celsius since I've gotten it... it IS heavy though...)
Mark.
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Seriously, though. If you can afford the extra expense, I'd recommend
a DataFrame XP60 (or even 150) from SuperMac. It's very reliable, very
fast, and works very well. It's a little more expensive, but from what
I've heard about hard drives, you get what you pay for.
Mark H. Anbinder
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Sometime over the summer MacWorld and/or MacUser had a comparison of roughly
300 drives. It was a table of price, size, speed and warranty. Basically,
I'd recommend against one with less than a year warranty. Some give two or
more. I've had my Jasmine for a year without problems. We have lots of
Rodimes at work with mixed experiences. The new Jasmines are Rodime drives
with their own firmware and software that seem better than Rodime Rodimes.
160Meg for $1275? Well, last year I paid $1295 for 90Meg. Today it's common
to get about 100Meg for about $1000. I'd say it's a good price. Keep looking
for reviews. (and get a real mailer :)
Fred Hollander
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I have an SE20 with Apple's miniscribe internal 20 -
it's dreadfully noisy, not only is the motor really loud,
but the head stepper is even louder - it sounds fast (although
it isn't), I don't know why Apple stopped fitting the Rodime 20.
That drive is actually quicker at data transfer than the Miniscribe
by about 30 %, although admittedly about 10% slower at seek time, if
that were possible !
Now this just applies to the miniscribe 20 that apple supply
(this SE was made in late november), so other capacities
may be different, but if this was the drive you were thinking of,
either think again or get some ear defenders (BTW, I'm not ultra-
sensitive to this problem), but it sure is noisy!
Sorry to be pessimistic - I have lots of drives and the miniscribe
is by far & away the worst ...
John
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I run a large macintosh BBS and own 12 mac harddrives. The only drive
to fail in the 2 years the BBS has been up is a MiniScribe. I don't know if
this is a general indication of their quality but...
I HIGHLY reccomend any drive that uses the Quantum mechanism. It has a MTBF of
50,000 hrs, the longest in the industy. They are fast and available at
discount. My next choice would be Rodime as their current drives seem real
solid.
Bob Murrow
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We had bad luck with a 20-meg Miniscribe that same standard with a Mac SE.
It lasted slightly less than a year before crashing badly. The local repair
shop told us that they see an unusually high number of these drives that
have died. I would recommend staying away from this 20-meg version. I
don't know about their other drives.
The drive is currently sitting on my desk with the covers off -- it has
some nasty scratches where the head crashed!
mike carlton
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Well, I do own a Miniscribe. I don't remember the model number, but it's a
62 meg delivered by Stratcomp. Well, it works, and has been running for
some months now with not none but small problems.
When I got it, it worked for one evening and then died. The company which
I bought it from sent me another driver, and since then it works fine.
I have to run the "ambulance" pretty often, since it loses 10 megs once
in a while. I don't know if the disk or driver is responsible for that.
No, I wouldn't buy a Miniscribe if I had a second choice, but I DON'T
know if I can blame the drive. The worst part is the fan noise, and I
guess that only holds for the Stratcomp drives.
I would say: I have some doubts, and I would check all comparable alternatives
first, but it works. I guess it's OK as a low-budget drive.
Ingemar Ragnemalm
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I've got a miniscribe disk inside my LaCie Cirrus 30. It has been fine
up til a few nights ago -- not too fast, but it's a 30 megger, so that's life,
and kind of loud (louder than the fan that LaCie supplies.) Two nights
ago, the thing crashed, to the extent that it can't be re-initialized.
That could be the drive, or the drive controller (made by LaCie, not
MiniScribe.)
Now, generally I have good things to say about LaCie, and I really
do believe my crash to be a fluke. I'd guess that MiniScribe drives are
pretty reliable. But I have had some unpleasantness...
Joe Hellerstein
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Subject: Re: INTERNAL Hard Drive for Mac SE
I just thought I'd throw a little support toward my hard disk: the Hardware
House MAX-40. I've got one for my II, and I just convinced a friend to get
one for his two floppy SE. I installed both myself, with very little
trouble. It is quite a tight fit in the SE, however. For $650, as a 16ms
seek drive (12ms with the on-board cache...) it can't be beat. I've been
beating on it for a couple of weeks so far, and no problems. I can't say
more than that, since it's a new drive, but I'm happy.
Bob Hablutzel
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Again, THANKS to everyone who helped. I hope posting this helps
someone else decide if need be.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dave =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EOTjarvis@mit-caf.MIT.EDU (Jarvis Jacobs) (03/21/89)
I am planning to buy a 20MB disk drive from EHMAN Enginnering, Inc.
Has anyone had bad/good experiences with this disk drive?
Thanks- from a New Plus owner
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/__/ | \__\ * jarvis@caf.mit.edu * /__/ | \__\ hurf@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Hurf Sheldon) (03/22/89)
Didn't see the original survey - will add my experiences.
We have bought for our lab Macs 6 hard drives over the years, 3
DataFrames and 3 MicroTechs. The DataFrames have worked
fine but when one (a 20)died after two years the dealer wanted
approx $600 to fix it. I am given to understand there is
an NEC drive that will fit and work in the DataFrame
power supply. We are looking for one. The MicroTech Novas
are perfect for public spaces - they are too big to carry off,
run cool so being covered with paper won't hurt and they are
guaranteed for 5 years. They are also the quietest box
I have seen & used. We have 2 Apple drives as supplied with
an SE(20) and a MacII(40) - neither has failed in 2 years of constant
use. The SE drive is noisy but we didn't notice until we
had a civilized fan put in the SE. Apple only charged us $70
to fix their own mistake! What a favor!
My personal system is a dual floppy SE. I had to horse
a hard disk home on a regular basis for awhile so I bought a Liberty
40meg drive for myself. It is very small, it is the fastest drive
of all the above, and it's 'filelok' partition software is
a nice feature. The Liberty people were just starting out when
I ordered my drive and they were very frank about problems
they were having with the compact power supply setup and
refused to send me a disk until they were happy with it. It
is either a qume or quantum 40meg 3.5" drive and a program
that take 6 seconds to load on the SE20 meg loads in 1.5 secs on
the SE/Liberty. Fits easily in my briefcase and has yet to suffer
from the trip to/from work. Louder than the MicroTechs - quiter
than the DataFrames (Higher pitched, tho)
Both the Liberty and the Microtek have a wheel to set the SCSI number
on the outside. Our early DataFrames do not - don't know about
more recent ones.
At the time I bought my disk(Oct'88) the MicroTech was the best price,
including the build it youself setups I found, the Liberty 40 was the
same cost as a DataFrame30 (not XP).
At this point I wouldn't consider anything other than MicroTech for
drives I was responsible for at work. Liberty makes the best solution
if you have to hump your drive around with you. It will fit in the
inside pocket of a Mac carrier(not recommended) and easily fits in
a briefcase or backpack(wrap it in something soft like a shirt)
Any drive that travels should always be in a plastic static bag.
If I bought another drive for myself it probably would be a 'build
it yourself' like the ones mentioned in the survey.
In five years of managing computer systems, there hasn't been a hard
drive that was totally reliable except for a Fujitsu Eagle. We have
DEC, Maxtor, Micropolis, Data General and CDC drives of all flavors
in that time and some drives last and some don't but except the Fujitsu
Eagle, no brand or model stands out as particularly good or bad.
hurf
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