biswa@janus.Berkeley.EDU (Biswa Ghosh) (04/04/91)
Hi, This is yet another request for help on buying a hard drive. If you have a summary of past responses to this, could you e-mail it to me? I could put it on sumex too, for future reference. Here's my situation: My 40 meg internal has only one meg free, so I want to add an external drive. I'm using an SE/30. I'm thinking of getting a Quantum 105 meg, because the prices on it are so low (~ $450 external). That size is also about the minimum that I think I will need to keep happy for at least a year! Here's my questions: (1) What should I buy? I have a quantum now, it's reasonably quiet, and reasonably fast. Are there problems with the current crop that I should worry about? Are there better values out there? Even in the Quantums, there seem to be two types. What's the difference? One's called pro, the other plus; or one has no special designation, the other has the suffix 'lps'. In both cases they are 12ms drives, but the latter costs over $100 more. (2) Where should I buy (mail order)? So far, APS has been highly recommended, but they are not the cheapest (~ $80 higher). Can you tell me other safe places to buy? (3) Formatting software - Have heard great things about SilverLining on the net. The ads make no mention of formatting software. Is this something I should worry about? Is it worth buying separately? Will I have problems if I don't buy formatting software? (4) Should or shouldn't the driver be terminated? Also, since the drive will be external, are there additional pieces I should worry about? WHew, that's a lot of questions, so I would appreciate any answers to any subset of them! Since this is probably a common question, I will be happy to make a summary and post it to the net and sumex. Thanks in advance, Biswa Ghosh 550 Cory Hall arpa: biswa@janus.berkeley.edu U.C. Berkeley uucp: ...ucbvax!janus!biswa Berkeley, CA 94720 tel: (415) 642-0395