sorensen@athena.mit.edu (Alma G. Sorensen) (06/18/91)
March 1991 MacWorld had a nice review of 110-250 MB hard drives. On the basis of their comments, I think I can narrow my choice for a 210 or so drive to : La Cie, APS, ClubMac, Hard Drives International, and Microtech. Anyone have experience with these under A/UX? Horror stories? And of course, actual benchmarks? Sorry to bring this up yet again, but the net is just such a good resource... Thanks, Greg Sorensen sorensen@athena.mit.edu
hintz@oz.ucop.edu (Richard Hintz) (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun18.155914.24331@athena.mit.edu> sorensen@athena.mit.edu (Alma G. Sorensen) writes: >March 1991 MacWorld had a nice review of 110-250 MB hard drives. >On the basis of their comments, I think I can narrow my choice >for a 210 or so drive to : La Cie, APS, ClubMac, Hard Drives >International, and Microtech. I have a follow on to this question. I have a Quantum 210 which I got from APS, but they don't supply magic A/UX formatters. Also, I have a Conner 120 in a IIsi which also doesn't have the magic disk utilities. Would anyone point me to today's best utilities for converting these disks to A/UX format? Thanks. Richard Hintz opsrjh@uccvma.ucop.edu University of California
damour@pluto.ral.rpi.edu (Kevin Damour) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun18.155914.24331@athena.mit.edu> sorensen@athena.mit.edu (Alma G. Sorensen) writes:
March 1991 MacWorld had a nice review of 110-250 MB hard drives.
On the basis of their comments, I think I can narrow my choice
for a 210 or so drive to : La Cie, APS, ClubMac, Hard Drives
International, and Microtech.
Anyone have experience with these under A/UX? Horror stories?
And of course, actual benchmarks?
Sorry to bring this up yet again, but the net is just such a good
resource...
Thanks,
I am using two models from LaCie, both are from Quantum. After a few
revs in the software for formatting (we got this settled over 1 year
ago) and a ROM upgrade on the Quantum drive, I have had NO problems
with the drives running under AUX. I just sent in my old
driver software to get an updated version for running under Sys 7 -
wonder what new tools they added.
Kevin Damour
CIRSSE Robotic Labs
RPI, Troy NY
damour@ral.rpi.edu
P.S. I have no connections to LaCie except for their drives running on
my MAC.sorensen@athena.mit.edu (Alma G. Sorensen) (06/20/91)
Thanks to all who responded. One of my respondents warned me strongly away from Maxtor drives, recounting some bad experiences. Is this universal experience? APS has a great deal on the Maxtor 340 MB (only $1189 external), that I am tempted... Thanks, Greg Sorensen sorensen@athena.mit.edu
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun20.120430.13058@athena.mit.edu> sorensen@athena.mit.edu (Alma G. Sorensen) writes: >Thanks to all who responded. > >One of my respondents warned me strongly away from Maxtor drives, >recounting some bad experiences. > >Is this universal experience? APS has a great deal on the Maxtor 340 MB >(only $1189 external), that I am tempted... The sour grapes concerning Maxtor amazes me. In the past I've heard nothing but good things about Maxtor. NeXT Computers used them exclusively (at least when the machine was introduced). Has something changed over at Maxtor? Corner-cutting? =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ORGANIZATION: BLETCH (Bletcherous League of Evil Twisted Computer Hackers) UUCP: kzin!speaker@mimsy.umd.edu INTERNET: jtn@potomac.ads.com SPOKEN: Dark Hacker PHONE: (703) 243-1611 FAVORITE MAGAZINE: Midnight Engineer TWISTED DIABOLICAL LAUGH: Mwahh ah ha ha hah ha ha ha! The Mythos of Dark Hacker: "Controlled by the sinister and shadowy "suits" Dark Hacker now employs the tools of computer science to free himself from the suit's will. By day he is a lackey... but at night when the city sleeps he becomes.... DARK HACKER!" =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
marcelo@deadzone.uucp (Marcelo Gallardo) (06/21/91)
sorensen@athena.mit.edu (Alma G. Sorensen) writes: >Thanks to all who responded. >One of my respondents warned me strongly away from Maxtor drives, >recounting some bad experiences. >Is this universal experience? APS has a great deal on the Maxtor 340 MB >(only $1189 external), that I am tempted... I've been using a Maxtor LT-100 as my root partition for about a year now. It's been working better than the Quantum 120 which houses my /usr partition. Well They've both been up and running without loosing any info, the Quantum just generates "Disk write c0d0s2 retry #1 successful." every once in a while. Never was able to figure out how to stop that. On a slightly different note, how many people use SyQuest cartridges with A/UX. I've been using mine for a while now and have noticed a few problems. First, it doesn't like having "big" programs compiled on it. Tried compiling "rn" on it once, and I received a "PANIC: while freeing inode" crash. Happened on a few other programs of that size as well. It also seems to constantly have read problems like the following... Disk read c4d0s3 Error: Recovered error, code = 0x17 Logical block 34064, physical blocks 34160-34167 Disk read c4d0s3 Error: Recovered error, code = 0x17 Logical block 34224, physical blocks 34320-34327 Disk read c4d0s3 Error: Recovered error, code = 0x17 Logical block 34752, physical blocks 34848-34855 Disk read c4d0s3 Error: Recovered error, code = 0x17 Logical block 35248, physical blocks 35344-35351 After a while (a few months) of use, I loose directories and files. Luckily I make backups, and I just re-format the cartridge and re-make the file system. I did have one cartridge go so bad, that it couldn't be formatted. Of course I used that cart for more than a year though. Anyone else have similar problems, or does everyone do the normal thing and just use SyQuests for Mac apps and backups? Sorry for the long winded posting 8-). -- Marcelo Gallardo marcelo%deadzone@princeton.edu Test and Evaluation Specialist ...!princeton!deadzone!marcelo Princeton University marcelo@sparcwood.princeton.edu Advanced Technologies and Applications (609) 258-5661
alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) (06/23/91)
I haven't had any problems with Maxtors, but the last one I bought was four
years ago, and I've never tried them with A/UX.
What I can tell you is that in that size, my favorite drive is the Wren Runner.
APS wants $1400. It's really worth it. I bought one when it was going for twice
the price, and I'm still glad I got it. It's extremely fast, and built like
a tank. (Details: transfer rate- 1.55MB/sec sustained; 11ms avg. access,
_without caching_.)
---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
alexis@panix.com
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexisalexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) (06/23/91)
marcelo@deadzone.uucp (Marcelo Gallardo) writes: > On a slightly different note, how many people use SyQuest > cartridges with A/UX. I've been using mine for a while now and > have noticed a few problems. First, it doesn't like having "big" > programs compiled on it. Tried compiling "rn" on it once, and I > received a "PANIC: while freeing inode" crash. Happened on a few > other programs of that size as well. > > It also seems to constantly have read problems like the > following... > > Disk read c4d0s3 Error: Recovered error, code = 0x17 > Logical block 34064, physical blocks 34160-34167 > [etc.] This doesn't surprise me at all. The Syquests have decent seek performance, but their transfer speed is abominable. I think they're even worse than the small 20MB Seagates that were so popular a year or two ago. And I'm not sure about this, but I think that they rotate slower than regular disks. If so, that doesn't help transfers, and increases latency (which makes seeking slower than you'd expect from the avg. access numbers they quote). What this all means is that the Syquests are barely acceptable to the A/UX disk device driver. They're on the fuzzy lower boundary of the performance envelope. --- Alexis Rosen Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY alexis@panix.com {cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis