Disk Drives

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

We have to be careful about being too hard and fast with hard drive relibility
over the long-term, since some drive makers have purchased others, and with
hard drives being such a commodity product, manufacturers evem make drives for
each others' brand names under contract! It's therefore real hard to say some-
thing universal in this area, unless you've noticed who's bought who, or con-
tracted to who else.

That said, I've had good (recent) experience with Maxtor, and every drive I 
have under 18 months old is either a Quantum or a Fugitsu. My first Fugitsu
drive broke (I mean physcially BROKE, the tailpiece was loosend from the 
chasis and broke its connections to the circuit board), but it was covered
under the Fugitsu "No Excuses" warranty, under which they replaced the unit,
inluding shipping. The replacement arrived DOA, but THAT The replacement has 
worked flawlessly since. The other Fugitsu drives around here have had no
problems at all, and I've noticed the 5 YEAR warranty as well. Their web-site
is an excellent reference point, which doesn't sound like a big deal -- until
you lose the data sheet and the jumper settings -- they have all that as 
.pdf's.

Quantum has made good drives over the long haul, and I've relied on several in
Sparcstations over the years; Quantum being a SUN OEM  (at least, I recall that
for the early 90's). Right now I have one of 'em, and it's done just fine.

I have 3 Maxtors, and once I learned to throw away the silly software that
comes with the newer ones, they've been pretty good. The oldest one will have 
its third birthday soon, with almost continuous service (not powered down more
than a week in the last 14 months) that should satisfy anyone. The other drive 
had very little use, but also no problems. The third is a FULL HIEGHT, 120 MB
drive -- an MFM drive, made in 1983 -- fits nicely into my AT [!] and still
going strong!

I've used Seagates and the oocasional WD in my time; their reliability has been
pretty good, but (prhaps becasue of a couple of sour experiences and others' 
anecdotal experiences), I've stayed away from 'em. I also tend to stay away 
from JRE's, Goldstars and Samsungs; they're either "bargains" or not a main
line of business for the parent company. IMO if you see a drive with a really
good price and a name you don't recognize from the drive business for at least
a year or so... pass it by!

In closing, let us stand in silence for some very fine drive makers that have
gone under in the name of tighter margins. Mostly, I'm thinking of Micropolis,
Priam, and Conner, but there are others, I'm sure. They all had to go out of
the business because they did not ship enough of their very high quality pro-
ducts. I have 2 EIGHT-INCH Priam drives from 1981 (on that AT!) that work great,
the only Conner I ever saw that had problems had fallen down a flight of 
concrete steps. Similarly and I've never SEEN or HEARD of a broken Micropolis 
drive, and they were always the largest and fastest drive in their time.

                                                           Cheers!
                                                            ---> RGB <---