On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 00:58:11 -0500
Ross Vandegrift <ross@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My IT day job is a place that uses tons of IDE drives. I've been
> building RAID arrays out of IDE since the days when 8.4G was huge.
> There really isn't a correllation between manufacturer and reliability
> (with of course, the exception of IBM's Deathstar series, but that's due
> to known manufacturing defects). We've run Seagate, Western Digital,
> and Maxtor heavily. It's just a reality that all drives suck.
I believe the drive manufacturers all take turns at being the ones that
suck. People today are swearing at Maxtor (though I use maxtors all the
time with no significant jump in the # of failed drives) and recommending
Seagate.
I'm old enough to remember the 105MB (yes, MB - go ahead and laugh at my
advancing age now!) drives that Sun shipped with their IPC/IPX machines
that had the "stiction" problem. The lube used on the spindle would
congeal when the drive was shut down, and the drive may or may not have
the angular momentum to break the seal cause by this thickened goo.
The fix was to impart a short, sharp shock to the drive just as you
turned the power on to it. This was so prevalent that when we had to
shut Suns down, I'd carry a rubber mallet with me. When a machine didnt
come up because of this problem, I'd rap the drive enclosure gently on
the side as I turned it on, and voila! The machine started fine.
It definitely added to my SysAdmin "mystique" to actually fix computers
with a hammer routinely!
--
======================================================================
Joe Hartley - Senior Unix Admin - Ingenta inc.
111R Chestnut St., Providence, RI 02903 - cell 401.338.9214
Joe.Hartley@xxxxxxxxxxx - AOL IM: JoeHartley
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
