fer@phyllis.math.binghamton.edu (fernando guzman) (03/03/90)
In article <23188@usc.edu> kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes: > > I advise you not to buy Everex products. > >I just recently got a Seagate ST-4096 hard disk which was repackaged by >Everex. The documentation which came with the disk was incorrect. The >software which came with the disk has serious bugs. > > Using the software provided by Everex led to other working systems in my > computer becoming non-functional. After calling the vendor, and talking > to their technical support people, I learned that Everex admits that > their software does not work. The vendor agreed to ship me a copy of > Seagate's software. I haven't received it yet, but I expect it to work > just fine. Do not be so sure. I am trying to install an ST-277R-1 hard disk, to replace an ST-238R. It came with software made by ONTRACK for SEAGATE, so this is official SEAGATE software. Here are some of the problems I am having: 1. The formatting and partitioning program, Disk Manager, does not recognize the drive correctly. The specs for the ST-277R are: 820 cylinders, 6 heads, 26 sectors/track for a total of 65Mb. DM has these values on its table, but when ST-277R is selected, it formats the disk as 1023 cylinders, 6 heads, 17 sectors/track for a total of 52Mb. 2. DM recommends creating a small DOS partition, since the BIOS will only recognize 4 heads, and parts of this first partition will be wasted. That sounds reasonable, but the BIOS on the WC1002-27X controller is supposed to handle up to 16 heads and is currently set up for up to 8 heads. 3. DM installs the system files on the first partition, but on exiting DM, the hard disk is not bootable. It just hungs in there. To sum up, I have now a non-bootable hard disk, with 53Mb usable (and 12Mb lost somewhere) in 3 partitions. Without the dmdrvr.bin driver that came with DM, only the first (1Mb) of the 3 partitions is usable, but all files stored previously using the dmdrvr.bin device driver, are garbage. Conversely, anything I store without dmdrvr.bin becomes garbage when the device driver is loaded. Fernando Guzman