terry@eesun1.eece.ksu.edu (Terry Hull) (06/10/90)
I am preparing to purchase a Exabyte subsystem from Andataco, and wondered if any of you sun.experts had any experience with Exabyte drives from these folks. I am planning to put it on a SS1 with 16 MB memory running SunOS4.1. I would be grateful for any insight you can provide on this combination. Terry Hull Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Kansas State University Work: terry@eece.ksu.edu, rutgers!ksuvax1!eecea!terry Play: terry@tah386.manhattan.ks.us, rutgers!ksuvax1!eecea!tah386!terry
aks@iti.org (Alan Stebbens) (06/12/90)
In <8720@brazos.Rice.edu> terry@eesun1.eece.ksu.edu (Terry Hull) writes: >I am preparing to purchase a Exabyte subsystem from Andataco, and wondered >if any of you sun.experts had any experience with Exabyte drives from >these folks. I am planning to put it on a SS1 with 16 MB memory running >SunOS4.1. I would be grateful for any insight you can provide on this >combination. AnDataCo has been very responsive to our needs, and have had good prices (we get educational pricing, too). For example, the other day, we had a disk drive die from hyperthermia, and, of course, it was a _critical_ drive, so we ordered an emergency replacement through AnDataco with the proviso that it be delivered as soon as possible. We received it within 36 hours. I wouldn't hesitate to order an EXABYTE from them, if we needed another (we have three). They seem to value customer satisfaction. Connecting an EXABYTE to a SPARC should be no problem, also. We've connected ours to a 3/50, and a 3/260. Disclaimer: I have no connection with AndataCo, except as a satisfied customer. Alan Stebbens <aks@hub.ucsb.edu> (805) 961-3221
zepf@trout.nosc.mil (Tom Zepf) (06/13/90)
In article <8720@brazos.Rice.edu> you write: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 207, message 12 > >I am preparing to purchase a Exabyte subsystem from Andataco, and wondered >if any of you sun.experts had any experience with Exabyte drives from >these folks. I am planning to put it on a SS1 with 16 MB memory running >SunOS4.1. I would be grateful for any insight you can provide on this >combination. We have purchased two Exabyte drives from Andataco over the last year and a half. I have one connected to a 3/60 and the other connected to a 3/260. I am currently running SunOS 4.1, but have used the drives with SunOS 4.0.1. The original drive we bought worked fine for about a year, but pretty much doesn't work at all now. We get write retry errors if we write big files. Cleaning the tape drive does not seem to help. Both drives have a hard time living on the SCSI bus with other peripherals. They seem to hang sometimes, forcing a reboot. Overall, I would still recommend Exabytes: their price/performance can't be beat. I just have two so I can hope that at least one is working at all times. Maybe someday I'll move to DAT if I hear it is more reliable. What I would really like is a MagnetoOptical drive, but that costs too much! Backups here would be impossible, or nearly so, without the Exabytes. It's definitely a love/hate relationship. Please note that this is not a complaint against Andataco. They have been extremely helpful (being a block away can't hurt I suppose...). None of their hardware has failed, it is the Exabyte drive itself which is somewhat unreliable. We have purchased quite a bit of equipment from them and have been satisfied. In fact, I like their enclosures more than any we have used yet. And they are very price competitive. We have several Sparcstation SLCs on order, and I intend to hook one of the Exabytes up to one of these, but I have not tried a Exabyte with a SS1 or SS1+ yet. I've heard rumors that the driver is not built into the sun4c kernel, but I can't verify this. I suppose I'll find out soon... Tom Zepf Optigraphics Corporation uunet!optigfx!zepf 9339 Carroll Park Drive scubed!optis31!zepf San Diego, CA 92121 (619)292-6060
terry@eesun1.eece.ksu.edu (Terry Hull) (06/14/90)
optigfx!optis31!zepf@trout.nosc.mil (Tom Zepf) writes: >We have purchased two Exabyte drives from Andataco over the last year and >a half. I have one connected to a 3/60 and the other connected to a 3/260. >I am currently running SunOS 4.1, but have used the drives with SunOS >4.0.1. The original drive we bought worked fine for about a year, but >pretty much doesn't work at all now. Is this what the rest of you Exabyte users experience? I can't afford to have two of these things sitting around just to keep one working, and neither can I afford to have my primary backup device down half of the time. Am I crazy for even considering an Exabyte as a primary backup method? If I buy one, does it need to be on maintenance? Terry Hull Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Kansas State University Work: terry@eece.ksu.edu, rutgers!ksuvax1!eecea!terry Play: terry@tah386.manhattan.ks.us, rutgers!ksuvax1!eecea!tah386!terry
bernhold@orange.qtp.ufl.edu (David E. Bernholdt) (07/03/90)
In article <8842@brazos.Rice.edu> terry@eesun1.eece.ksu.edu (Terry Hull) writes: > >Is this what the rest of you Exabyte users experience? I can't afford to >have two of these things sitting around just to keep one working, and >neither can I afford to have my primary backup device down half of the >time. Am I crazy for even considering an Exabyte as a primary backup >method? If I buy one, does it need to be on maintenance? We just had out Exabyte fail for the first time in two years of routine use (nightly backups). We shipped it off to Exabyte & they had it back to us in 8 days. They wanted an open P.O. authorized for up to $700. We haven't gotten the actual bill yet. Be sure you put the return authorization number on there in big friendly letters -- they returned ours initially because the claimed it didn't have one. It did -- they just didn't see it, apparently. David Bernholdt bernhold@qtp.ufl.edu Quantum Theory Project bernhold@ufpine.bitnet University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 904/392 6365