bollard@hpspkla.spk.hp.com (Lee M. Bollard) (02/08/91)
Does anyone know the MTBF specs for the 200meg Connor 3204 and the Maxtor 200meg IDE drives? Any idea how reliability compares between these two drives? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Lee Bollard unix: bollard@hpspkla.spk.hp.com Hewlett-Packard HPDesk: Lee BOLLARD / HP1000/53 Spokane Division Compuserve: 72105,423 (509)921-4608 * Opinions are my own, not my employer's * -----------------------------------------------------------------------
ralphc@tekcae.CAX.TEK.COM (Ralph Carpenter) (02/09/91)
In article <8750004@hpspkla.spk.hp.com> bollard@hpspkla.spk.hp.com (Lee M. Bollard) writes: >Does anyone know the MTBF specs for the 200meg Connor 3204 and the >Maxtor 200meg IDE drives? > >Any idea how reliability compares between these two drives? > For those of you who are looking for high reliability in a larger drive, take note of the Fujitsu M2261 drives. I just installed one in my AT Clone, after wearing out a CDC WREN 40 meg, then a CONNOR 106 meg drive. I was tired of buying/replacing drives. Fujitsu advertises a 5 year warranty and 200,000 hr. MTBF. The factory repair/refurbishment fees for Maxtor, CDC, and Connor are nearly the (discounted) cost of new drives, and the warranty on a factory refurbished drive was pretty short too. My CDC drive *Just* outlived the 6-mo. warranty I got, and the turnaround time was about 6 weeks. The last drive I thought about getting the factory to repair was the Connor, but their price is high, and the turnaround time was terrible too. Fujitsu offers a 5 year warranty on the drive I just bought. 350+ meg, full- height 5 1/4" ESDI drive, also available in larger sizes, and SCSI as well. I talked to a lot of Fujitsu people: the warranty is just what it says... any time within 5 years of original purchase that it fails, I can send it in to be repaired/replaced without charge. If I want fast turnaround, Fujitsu will give 48 hour turnaround for $50. I have consulted with the repair depot (in Hillsboro, Oregon, a local call for me,) and they verified what the sales personnel (I usually double-check claims made by sales types.) seemed to be saying-- "We'll fix it for 5 years, just like you heard." I got a single drive, just to test the water, for less than $1300 from Cypress Distributors, one of two in-town distributors the Fujitsu telemarketing person looked up in their data base. I,ve had it in for about a month now. Be sure to get a Technical Handbook, the drive has a lot of jumpers you'd never guess the location of. One good thing about Fujitsu Techincal Support is their 800 number. For those of you hooking up to an IBM PC, the Adaptec 2322D controller makes a good match, and re-maps the drives 1650+ cylinders + 8 heads into "16 heads and 682 cylinders" for DOS compatibility. For those of us wondering how Fujitsu came up with 200,000 hour MTBF ( 22.8 years of 24 hour days??? The drives have not been made that long ago!) I asked a local reliability engineer, who confirmed that Fujitsu's calculation "200,000 hours (after an initial 3-month period.) Measured as total hours when power is on divided by the number of equipment failures from all field sites." (Quoted from the technical handbook shipped with the drive, page 4-4.) is the way MTBF is commonly calculated. He also said that the MTBF figures for equipment are valid only within the "useable lifetime of the device", which accounts for the "initial 3-month" disclaimer. In other words, a device with a useable life of 5.001 years could have a 22.8 year MTBF! Ralph Carpenter Thermal Engineering Group Tektronix, Inc. Beaverton, OR Usual Disclaimers... My opinions are just that, Tektronix did not authorize me to post this, and I have no connection with Fujitsu, Adaptec, etc.