🚀 go-pugleaf

cart@umich.edu (c art) wrote:

>      Has anyone ('Net, magazine, etc.) done a comparison of 2.1-gig AV
>drives -- Micropolis 4221 AV, Seagate Barracuda, Quantum?

>     The 250Mb hard drive that came with my 7100 is bulging -- time to upgrade.

>      Can immediately use a regular 2-gig drive to do graphics (Photoshop,
>Painter, etc.) but Master Plan is to get a 2-gig AV drive in anticipation
>of getting other stuff for a digital audio project in the next year. Have
>no need or desire to do video capture.

>      Dejanews has shown about the same number of posts swearing by and at
>these drives -- reliability and performance (at least from posters, not
>lurkers) seem similar to me. Would love to hear from anyone with
>definitive information.

>thank you 

>craig j

>email:   cart@umich.edu

>-- 
>craig j
>cart@umich.edu


Hey Craig, 

Don't know what you mean by "definitive information", but I can tell
you to begin with, that you can't go wrong with any of the vedors you
just named.  But if you want one of the newer drives, maybe an Ultra
SCSI 3, then here's some information that may help:

The Micropolis AV Gold series (which are standard Fast SCSI drives)
have been around for quite a while now-well not that long, but newer
drives (the Ultra SCSI 3's) have been made by Seagate, HP, IBM, and
Quantum that match or exceed its specs.  I think Micropolis is hard at
work on Fast-20 and Fast-40 drives now, but I don't know if anything
has hit yet.

If you are looking for an Ultra SCSI 3 drive (Fast 20) then, you'd
first need a Fast-20 SCSI adaptor (like an Adaptec 2940UW).  Two of
the best 2 GB Ultra SCSI drives are the Seagate Barracuda 4LP
(ST32171) and the Quantum Atlas II (XP32181).  Add "W" to the end of
the vendor part numbers if you need an Ultra Wide drive (40MB/sec).
These two drives are brand new and virtually identical in performance
specs.  I don't know of any other manufacturers that make drives that
can compare with either of these.

As for reliability, I haven't tried any of these out (in fact, I'm not
even 100% sure if they've hit the market yet!), but I've got one
friend who swears by the old Quantum Atlas and another who is in love
with his ST32550 fish (which he got when it first came out).