osmigo@ut-emx.UUCP (07/26/88)
I recently had a somewhat disturbing experience with my Mirror Magnet 40X hard disk and the ensuing attempts to get it fixed by Mirror Technologies. I would be very interested in hearing from any Mirror owners out there. The particular incident involved a crash of the HD, which could not be reformatted with the factory-supplied formatting software. I kept getting error messages like "erase operation failed" and "check your cables." I got identical results when I tried the operation on a new SE with a new cable. Mirror, however, kept the device for almost two weeks, and claimed they could not find anything wrong with it. They are returning it to me, apparently with nothing done to it. I'm open to comments, opinions, etc. =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ >--Ron Morgan--------------{ames, utah-cs, uunet}!ut-sally!ut-emx!osmigo-------< >--Univ. of Texas--{gatech, harvard, pyramid, sequent}!ut-sally!ut-emx!osmigo--< >--Austin, Texas--------osmigo@ut-emx.UUCP-------osmigo@emx.utexas.edu---------< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Mark_Peter_Cookson@cup.portal.com (07/28/88)
The only thing that counts is when you get it back, does it work? I am at a loss to explain what happend. When my HD died I sent it back for a low level reformat as when it was initlized it came back as only 10 meg... More importantly, does you drive still have all your data on it? (That might have been destroyed by you though when you tried to reformat it.) Oh well, hope it really is ok. Mark Cookson P.S. Maybe all it needed was to be turned off for two weeks!
alexis@dasys1.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (07/29/88)
Recently, somebody complained about a Mirror hard disk. Frankly, I'm
astonished that they're still in business. They probably won't be for long,
though. That's got nothing to do with whether I like them or not- they are
just in terrible financial shape.
While I'm at it, though, I definitely *DO NOT LIKE* them. They build very
shoddy equipement. So shoddy, in fact, that when mine went, it didn't crash.
It burned. In a cloud of flame and PCB-filled smoke. It left a nasty scorch
mark on my desk, and some of the fluid got on my hands. The skin went numb
and fell off in a few days. Needless to say I was not too happy. It wasn't
the power line either, as my Mac II wasn't affected (thank god it was far
away from the drive!!!).
I am not exaggerating. I know the designer of this unit and he agrees with
me that they are unsafe. He says that Mirror changed the design, using bad
power supplies to save money.
Their tech support was the worst. Took them seven weeks to replace the drive,
with another which had _350 bad sectors_, which couldn't boot off a Mac II
because they didn't know how to write decent drivers...
I don't think there is any other company I will be glad to see go under, but
I would definitely like to see Mirror die. They deserve it.
Since then I have bought only CMS drives (I will be trying MicroNet, though,
since the guy who put CMS on the MacMap is the founder of MicroNet). I can't
see a reason to buy from any other manufacturer. So far, they ship on time,
have the lowest prices of the non-fly-by-nighters, and their software is
really good.
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Alexis Rosen {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Writing from {harpo,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!alexis
The Big Electric Cat