UCBARPA.dag@Ucb-C70@sri-unix (12/10/82)
From: UCBARPA.dag at Ucb-C70 (David Allen Gewirtz) This comes third hand from a materials scientist in Silicon Valley who is working on hard disk recording methods. I am not sure of the actual techical accuracy, but the gist is AVOID ELEPHANT MEMORY DISKS - THEY WILL SCREW UP YOUR HEADS. The disks have a large amount of what I think he called Alumina. Although the disks do not seem to have many errors, they have an interesting side effect. The alumina(?) is used to reduce cost and increase disk reliability, but too much will erode the heads of disk drives. The Elephant disks have too much. I am trying to get a more specific and accurate description of the problem and will post it as soon as I decipher it. In the intevening weeks, simply beware of Elephehant memory disks. David
POURNE@Mit-Mc@sri-unix (12/11/82)
From: Jerry E Pournelle <POURNE@Mit-Mc> My engineers tell me much the same thing, except that for Atari drives Elephant disks are better than Dysans because with Atari the thicker the medium the better; or so say they for reasons that I did not bother to try to understand. jep
goldfarb.ucf-cs@Udel-Relay@sri-unix (12/12/82)
From: Ben Goldfarb <goldfarb.ucf-cs@Udel-Relay> So many times we have seen testimonials about a particular brand of floppy disk; I'm certain yours will not be the last of them. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to come up with any empirical data to substantiate his claim. I'm partial to Memorex because they're cheap and relatively error-free, albeit they sound terrible. Somewhere someone has tested various brands of diskettes -- I'd sure like to see the results posted to the net! Ben Goldfarb
Mead@Usc-Eclb@sri-unix (12/12/82)
From: Dick <Mead@Usc-Eclb> Just an aside, I purchased some diskettes (ATHANA or some name like it) whick were sold as DDDS, and at 1/2 the price I got some vanilla Elephant (SSSD rated). Well, the DDDS rated disks had 50% failure rate when I tried to format them on my H89, using a TM100-4 disk in DDDS(80trk) mode, while all the Elephant disks worked FINE! So, frankly, I could care less about ALUMINA! What works is what I want..maybe the mfgrs should have a FDA nipping at them like the food makers do. -------
MADLER@Mit-Ml (12/12/82)
From: Michael C Adler <MADLER@Mit-Ml> I have a box of Elephant disks that I won't touch in my closet. Each one worked fine for a half hour and then died! This does not happen with my memorex disks that have given me no problems (yes, I have heard those are pretty abrasive too.) -Michael P.S. Elephants have been known to forget when they die.
sokolov (04/10/83)
I am interested in gathering information concerning the pros and cons of
various floppy disks. The article concerning the floppy disk warning
concerned various members of our lab since we use elephant floppy disks
quite extensively. This concern has prompted me to do this survey.
Send all replies to me and I will post the results if sufficient people respond.
Jeff Sokolov
sdcsvax!sdcsla!sokolov
sdcsla!sokolov@nprdc