🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, up to about a year ago I worked in an Apple repair shop.  Having
swapped out about 3 dozen SCSI hard drives that I have failed, here
are my thoughts.

When Apple first shipped the 40MB 3.5" SCSIs they used Seagate
ST-157Ns.  That lasted about 3 weeks.  In those three weeks, we 
swapped out 5 of these drives that died.  After three weeks Apple
send out a "Priority Notice" saying that Mac products would no longer
use the ST-157Ns and we should return any existing stock for a
"new" vendor.  The new Vendor was Quantum and the drives were
ProDrives.  After that we only had ONE Quantum drive go bad, and it
was one of the drives with a "stickion" problem.  Quantum shipped
Apple one bad lot of about 1,000 40MB drives with too much lube on 
them.  To fix it, Apple sent out a replacement PROM for the drive that
would "exercise" the drive for about 3 weeks during normal use, and 
then return to normal.  The extra head action was supposed to even
out the execess lube, and it did work and this customer didn't have
to replace a drive or lose any data.

In general, I am convinced that Quantums are better and considering
the importance of your data, and the expense and hassle of having
an HD die, spend the extra $$ on a Quantum.  If you go over the specs
on Quantums-vs-Seagates you begin to see the differnce.  Some ones
from memory:

MTBF (this is an important spec): Quantum 70,000 hours, Seagate 25-35,000.
Non-Operating Shock:		  Quantum 40 Gs, 	Seagate 15-20Gs.
(If you do some math, the earlier joke about dropping it out of a
building isn't as much of a joke as you might think).

Etc, Etc.

One important note though, Quantums are 11-12ms Access on READs only.
This is because of their built in 64K look ahead *read* cache.  They
are 19ms (their physical rating) on writes.  At the low level Quantums
fully support automatic bad block detection and mapping and have some
other neat features.

So, I can say, I'll go for a Quantum over a Seagate any time.
(Although my two current 20MB drives are Miniscribes and have been
well behaved.)

-- 
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Mark Gooderum			Only...		\    Good Cheer !!!
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