mark@scs-sd.UUCP (04/28/87)
From: Dave Green <sdcsvax!seismo!harvard!dartvax!daveg> Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Hi, I dont have much input into the survey, but I do know a few things about the hard drives. The data frame 20's that we have in the department at the college are very nice. They have had a few problems, but the service that we have gotten is tremendous. In one case, we mailed in a drive that was having troubles and they (1) sent us a loaner for the interim while our original was in the shop. (2) returned ours promptly upon repairing it and (3) made every effort to recover the data on the drive and had extracted most of our files from the old and placed them neatly back onto the correctly functioning repaired drive. friendly user service. ------ From: George Grenley <sdcsvax!seismo!ames!nsc.NSC.COM!grenley> Organization: National Semiconductor, Sunnyvale >1) Brand, model, size - please note if not scsi Warp 9 20 meg internal SCSI 3 1/2" >2) Manufacturer of disk drive itself (if known) not known (i think rodime?) >3) Features (head parking, backup or other software, print spooling, etc.) i guess it head parks - i don't do it manually >4) Comments on use: > a) Noise levels (does it have a fan?) medium noisy by itself - i added a high volume fan to my mac (internally mounted under handle, w/ large non-FCC hole in case, not it's quite noisy) > b) Comparative speed (folklore acceptable) subjectively, I think its faster than the original Hyperdrive, but I've never benchmarked it. It's plenty fast for my purposes - launches in 5 to 10 sec. - I'm not doing any compiles or big DBMS (yet) > c) Software/hardware hitches, problems, misfeatures Early units were buggy and crashed a lot - the unit I have now, combined with the 128K roms, works OK. It doesn't have separate volumes but w/ HFS that's not really a problem. >5) Reliability > a) have you, or anyone you know, had problems? Yes Yes Yes!!! I bought one of the first units ($900, when Hyperdrives were $2000) and had many problems - in fact I'm on my third unit. Warp9 has completely redesigned it along the way and it seems to be OK now. Their support has been cheerful, fast, and effective, though. > b) what kind of support do/did you get? see above >6) Price and mail order availability $900, bought mailorder direct from company, no problem. ------ From: sdcsvax!moss.ATT.COM!saf (Steve Falco) I bought a Jasmine Direct Drive 20 (yep, 20 Megabytes) direct from the manufacturer (San Francisco, CA). It comes complete with cable and hooks directly to the MAC+ SCSI port. $600 and they ship it to you Purolator second-day air. 1 year warantee, 30 day money-back-no-questions-asked. (Well they do ask one question ... *why*?) The drive is the industry standard Seagate 225N - Jasmine puts it in a shock mount, adds a power supply, fan, transient suppressors, and a really nice address select switch. The box is steel (no cheese-o plastic) and is painted MAC tan (or cream or buff or whatever). Includes air filter. (The red flicker-light is behind the air filter so it is subdued - no bright red glare for those night-flights. The software is very good - comes with two formatters (one fast and one which does pattern testing), a parking DA, a "mount forcer" (in case you trash the poor thing), and Apple's Disk First Aid program. It also comes with about 8Meg of PD and SW - I havn't gone through much of it so I don't really know what I've got. I do know there are resource and icon tools, terminal emulators, games (lots!), write and paint utilities, etc. It isn't totally quiet but it *is* quieter than the Apple HD20 we have at work. I believe it is faster than the HD20 because it uses 2 way interleaving rather than the more standard 3 way (folklore time). Jasmine is trying to get the driver to where 1:1 interleaving will work. The Seagate drive is not the world's fastest (perhaps 65ms seek) but compared to floppies... Now the bad news. My first drive arrived in perfect working order and ran for 1 whole day. I went to boot it the next day to write a letter of congratulations to Jasmine, and the damn thing wouldn't boot! The technical hot-line was very competent but sadly told me the error code I was seeing was fatal. So I sent it back, waited about a week (mostly postal delay) and ... the new drive has been flawless. Would I do it again? Yep. I belive that this is a good product with a good price. The manual is excellent, the support is excellent. My only complaint is that it cost me $15 to mail the first one back to them. :-) There is a several week wait on new orders (at least there was). Steve Falco AT&T Bell Laboratories ------ From: sdcsvax!tc.fluke.COM!allegra!moriarty Reply-To: sdcsvax!tc.fluke.COM!moriarty (Jeff Meyer) Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA >1) Brand, model, size - please note if not scsi Supermac Dataframe 20 (SCSI). Bought May '86. >2) Manufacturer of disk drive itself (if known) Supermac >3) Features (head parking, backup or other software, print spooling, etc.) Software to: Park heads, backup software print spooling, boot up from disk >4) Comments on use: > a) Noise levels (does it have a fan?) No. Pretty quiet, but my Mac's fan drowns it out. I disconnected its anti-static brush -- it started whining after about six months, and that fixed it. > b) Comparative speed (folklore acceptable) As fast as anything that doesn't mess around with the Mac's SCSI code in ROM, like the Dataframe 20XP and 40XP, or something hooked up to the 68000, like an internal Hyperdrive. > c) Software/hardware hitches, problems, misfeatures SOftware definately had hitches at first; however, spooler is now quite reliable, and the backup program's only problem is that it doesn't restore files with their original dates. Apparently this will be fixed soon. >5) Reliability > a) have you, or anyone you know, had problems? The only time I've had a problem was when the SCSI cable from Apple came loose. Other than that, flawless -- and that is the important thing to me. > b) what kind of support do/did you get? Excellent software support. Hardware support would be perfect (i.e. your's is broken, they send a new one in 24 hours), except the warrenty is reluctantly supported for people who didn't buy via dealers or directly (i.e. mail order)... at least, that's what I heard when I called about upgrading to an 20XP (glad I didn't!). >6) Price and mail order availability Can get it from ComputerWare in Berkeley, $800 -- but that was a year ago! I believe The Savings Zone sells them, too. > *) and, by the way, how do you feel about the mail order company? Not great -- they monkeyed around with it and left my SCSI ID # as 1 instead of 0 when it arrived. "I cook with gas, I ride in tractors, I drink with deceased movie actors." Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer ------ From: megatek!amdahl.UUCP!krs (Kris Stephens) Organization: Amdahl Corp, Sunnyvale CA >1) Brand, model, size - please note if not scsi HyperDrive, Internal, 20M, non-SCSI >2) Manufacturer of disk drive itself (if known) GC >3) Features (head parking, backup or other software, print spooling, etc.) Backup/Restore (Full and Incremental; Whole Disk and Drawer) Print Spooler (I haven't used it) HFS/MFS (But Backup/Restore only understands MFS) Manager: Create/Delete drawers Set file capacity of drawers Set Finder defaults ("Mount drawers that were open? [ny]") Drawers DA (for mounting) >4) Comments on use: > a) Noise levels (does it have a fan?) Has a fan; heads make a percolating sound. > b) Comparative speed (folklore acceptable) Who knows? Check MacWorld's write-up last year for comparison. > c) Software/hardware hitches, problems, misfeatures I wish Backup/Restore would handle HFS. >5) Reliability > a) have you, or anyone you know, had problems? Yeah - a month after installation, the controller PCB (which clips onto the 68000) broke. > b) what kind of support do/did you get? Replaced in one afternoon by a techie/salesman. >6) Price and mail order availability > *) and, by the way, how do you feel about the mail order company? $1600 (July 1986). Pax Computator, ...Kris ------ From: sdcsvax!seismo!rochester!bullwinkle!batcomputer!beloin (Ron Beloin) Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY Well, you'll probably hear from a few dataframe owners, so what's one more, right? I use a dataframe 20 (non-xp) at work and one at home. (plus at work, 512 at home with supermac scsi port). no problems at all. up until recently, my only complaint was the backup software, but they just came out with DiskFit, and I like it a lot. It strores files in normal finder format, so there's no special directory and magic nonsense. They've never asked for a penny more for software upgrades. It's about as fast as you can get with the current Mac. One year warranty. They throw in superlaserspool in addition to the imagewriter spooler, which is also very nice. No fan, so not much noise. good luck with your choice! (I don't have stock in the company, although I wish I did [ ;-) ]) Ron Beloin. ------ From: sdcsvax!f.gp.cs.cmu.edu!Duane.Williams I have a PHOTON 20, 20 MB SCSI drive from Warp Nine Engineering. They only sell it direct to end users, not through dealers or other mail order places. It comes with a utility program to format the disk (although it comes pre- formatted). Warp Nine sells a backup program and print spooler separately, but I haven't used either. I use PCPC's HFS Backup, which is pretty good. The PHOTON 20 is moderately noisy and has a fan. It sits under the Mac and raises it about 3 inches. There is an extra SCSI port on the back to chain another SCSI device. Changing the SCSI address of the drive requires opening the case and moving jumpers around. Most people would never have any need to do this, but it isn't especially difficulty. The folks at Warp Nine will tell you how, if you ask. The documentation that comes with the drive is skimpy. The PHOTON 20 is about average speed, based on DiskTimer 2 results. My impression is that you don't have to worry too much about speed in choosing a drive, especially if you are able to use the RAM cache a lot. I had my drive almost three months and it suddenly developed a high-pitched whine, but otherwise was working normally. It was within the 90 day warranty; so I sent it back and got a replacement in 1.5 weeks, no questions asked. My group at CMU has four PHOTON 20s and none of them has ever caused any problem; I suppose we've had them a year now. The latest price I've seen advertised is $569. You have to buy the cable separately, which is about $30, if my memory serves me correctly. The latest issue of The Macintosh Journal had comparative reviews of 13+ SCSI drives. They didn't review the PHOTON 20, but they did review the Jasmine Direct Drive 20 and they likely it very much. It ranked in the top 3 or 4 speedwise, was not very noisy, was judged to be well built, and is about the same price at the PHOTON 20, if not a little cheaper. If I were buying today, I would very likely get a Jasmine. You should get a copy of the latest issue of The Macintosh Journal. -Duane ------ From: Howard Ignatius <megatek!hplabs.HP.COM!hp-sdd!decwrl!sun!megatest!ignatius> 1) Brand, model, size - please note if not scsi - Direct Drive 80 2) Manufacturer of disk drive itself (if known) - Jasmine 3) Features (head parking, backup or other software, print spooling, etc.) - Auto or manual head parking - Fast, 26 millisecond access time - error correction and media defect handling - Optional 2 year waranty - 2 SCSI connectors - Externally mounted SCSI select switch - 2 switched AC outlets with surge protection - External fuse - Internal fan 4) Comments on use: a) Noise levels (does it have a fan?) - Low b) Comparative speed (folklore acceptable) - Blazes!! Even faster with the new ROMs and System 4.0. c) Software/hardware hitches, problems, misfeatures - None so far. 5) Reliability a) have you, or anyone you know, had problems? - I've heard of problems with their third party SCSI interface, however, I have not experienced any with mine. I did have a boot problem in the beginning, but that has resolved itself with the new ROMs. I have a 512KE with JasPort. b) what kind of support do/did you get? - They are very busy and it is extremely hard to get them to even answer their phone. However, the sign of the good drive is to come up even when help is not available. 6) Price and mail order availability *) and, by the way, how do you feel about the mail order company? - They have a direct from the factory policy. I was fortunate enough to be able and visit them when my drive was ready. Having had a bad experience with Warp 9, same as Mirror Technologies, I was uneasy about working directly with them. However, they came highly recommended by the same people who make Hard Disk Utility, who also make a good software product, so I decided to give Jasmine a try. I haven't been disappointed yet, with the exception of their customer service phone line. ------ From: sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!psivax!dbase!awd (Alastair Dallas) I use a Peripheral Land PL20 (SCSI) 20MB I bought from Priority One (retail) It has a fan, but it's quiet. The only problem with it is that the enclosure is odd--5-1/4" x 2" x 13"--it doesn't fit with the Mac at all. The joy of SCSI is that you plug the drive in and it boots--it's childishly simple. I've had the drive nearly a year with no problems, and I understand they have better enclosures now. And better prices than $895. It seems faster than the DataFrames we have here at work, but not by much. Alastair Dallas ASHTON-TATE Glendale -- -- -- mark thompson is sdcsvax!scs-sd!mark -- What's the frequency, Kenneth? --