dave@unislc.uucp (Dave Martin) (03/29/91)
Could someone give me information or opinions on the SyQuest removable drives? Are they "real" harddrives? (as in to the heads "float" above the disk, or are they in physical contact with the disk?) What is the life expectancy of the drive and the cartridges? Can they be left running for a long time (weeks-months) without problems, especially if they aren't accessed very often? What is the stiction problem that I've seen mentioned with other drives, and do the SyQuests suffer from it? My intention is to use this drive with my A3000 and an EPS sampler, prefereably hooked up to both simotaneously, Also, when not using it with the EPS, I intend to treat it just like a hard drive for my amiga, which I tend to leave running. I tried one out on a loaner basis and tried formatting two partitions simotaneously. It made a terrible sounding screaching noise (hence the question about the heads floating) but seemed to work ok. A friend speculated that this was just normal seek noise (as can be heard from the Quantum in the 3000) but louder since it was not sealed inside a steel container like a normal hard drive. Are the cartriges very durable? Do they need to be treated like a new born baby or can they be as abused as badly as 3 1/2 in. floppies and still work? (I try for the new born baby approach, but accidents happen.) As an aside, I could only get diskchange stuff to work if the drive only had one partition, otherwise I got "you MUST replace ..." requesters. (I had one of the partitions formatted Old FS at this time and didnt really experiment extensively). Thanks in Advance. -- VAX Headroom Speaking for myself only... blah blah blahblah blah... Internet: DMARTIN@CC.WEBER.EDU dave@saltlcy-unisys.army.mil uucp: dave@unislc.uucp or use the Path: line. Now was that civilized? No, clearly not. Fun, but in no sense civilized.