🚀 go-pugleaf

What follows is information I have collected on gigabyte drives during the
past few weeks.  I plan to purchase one or two drives in January 1993, and
will be using them for years to come (I hope :-).  I am looking for comments
on the text below from users who own these drives or are also looking into
their purchase.  Similiar text has been posted on Compuserve.  Micropolis
mantains a presence on CompuServe, and perhaps even Internet.
______________________________________________________________________________

______Drives that have been recommended to me:

Micropolis 2112. 3.5" drive, fast SCSI-2, formatted capacity is 1 gigabyte,
3-5 MByte/sec transfer rate, 10-11ms access rate.  Average price: $1700
5 year warranty, 300,000 MTFB. (24 years?).  From many dealers, a 24 hour
turn-around time is promised on replacements (ship it to them, they ship
you a new drive, and deal with Micropolis with the bad drive).

Fujitsu M2266FA.  1079 megabytes, 15ms access time, Fast SCSI-2. Average
Price: $1800.  The M2266SA is also available, which is plain SCSI-2.
5 year warranty.

The Toshiba MK-538FB, 1.2 gigabyte, 11.5ms, SCSI-2 (fast SCSI-2??), 3.5"
drive, around $1600.

Hewlett-Packard, 5 year warranty, model #, other information unknown.

______Drives I am shying away from:

Maxtor Panther series.  At least two people have reported problems with this
drive, and coupled with its 1 or 2 year warranty, why take the chance.

Quantum drives.  The large models (500mb+) are not at all listed in various
magazines (Computer Shopper, etc), which makes one suspicious.  They also
have only a 2 year warranty.

Seagate drives.  I think not.

Conner.  I wouldn't mind getting one, but do they even sell 1 gig drives?

______Places to buy drives:

Hard Drives International is a good source, albeit expensive (but you can
trust them).  There are some people on CompuServe (and Usenet, I'm sure)
who also will sell you drives, but it can be difficult to make sure the
drive is new, and not collecting dust or something.  A place called
AmeriTek advertises in Computer Shopper & PC-Week and seems fairly cheap,
but their ads only go back to mid-1991, Jan & Feb 1991 PC-Week did not
have any ads for them.  I'm looking for any recommendations people have.
______________________________________________________________________________

Finally, group purchases.  It seems like a good idea, except most of the
vendors I talked to offer pitiful discounts for buying 10 drives (one person
said no discount, the others $50-150 off.)  It doesn't seem worth it to
have a group buy at that level.

I'm leaning towards a Micropolis 2112, I've heard nothing but good things
about it, and its a relatively new drive (summer, 1992).  The Fujitsu
M2266FA also sounds great.

If anyone has any comments on the above text, please follow up or mail me.
All messages will be saved, archived, and uploaded to sites & Compuserve
for future Gigabyte drive purchasers.  I also have captured all relevent
messages from CompuServe on this issue and will include it in the archive.

--
parik rao				          prao@cs.ucsb.edu, rao@cmc.com
            Bush, Bush, he's our man, if he can't do it, Quayle can!