Re: [SCALUG] IBM Hard Disks

[Chris Zwilling <chris@cloudnet.com>]

On Sun, 21 Nov 1999, Troy Johnson wrote:

> Greetings to all,
> 
> I have a few questions about IBM IDE hard disks for those of you who
> have owned/used them:
> 
> Are they reliable?
> Are they quiet (compared to others)?
> 
> I have owned Seagate, Conner, Western Digital, Maxtor, and Fujitsu
> drives, but never an IBM, so I want to know if they have a reputation.
> While I'm asking, any recommendations for larger (17+ GB), inexpensive
> hard disks? I'd like SCSI, but I can't go too far above $150 (budget)
> and I want lots of space, so SCSI is right out. :-(
> 
> I would appreciate any informational answers, and thank you in advance,
> 
> Troy

I own several IBM drives - SCSI - but they have been quiet, cool and
reliable.  My experience with the IDE stuff is about the same - it seems
to work as well as IDE can.

In a somewhat related note:  Recently I purchased an IDE Maxtor 36GB drive.
<SARCASM> That was fun getting it to work. </SARCASM>  It turns out
that stock kernels have problems with drives that have more than 4092
cylinders (> 33.8 GB; not just Maxtor).  Without the patch the kernel
would "wrap around" and start writing info at the beginning of the drive -
Just like writing to the 17th MB on an 80286.  There is a patch to fix
this problem in the 2.3.xx kernels (greater than minor revision 21) but I
don't know if the patch was back ported to 2.2 yet.  There is no such
problem on the SCSI side because of the difference in the design
philosophies behind each technology:

1.  SCSI - design it once correctly from the start and never have a
problem until we hit 2TB.  Then just play with the sector size.  Designed
in the 70s by NCR because of licensing problems with SASI (Shugart
Assosiates Standard Interface).

2.  IDE, EIDE, ATA, UDMA (etc, etc) - Design something cheap and sleazy 
just to retain compatibility with our previous mistakes.  Then fix the
problem with all sorts of strange games when we hit 504MB, 2048MB, 8192MB,
33.8GB, 128GB....  This is a horse designed by an inter-corporation 
committee (Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, etc etc).

Oops.

</RANT>

doh.  sorry.

;-----------------------------------------;
;                                         ;  Chris Zwilling
;  Don't let people drive you crazy       ;  chris@cloudnet.com
;  when you know it's in walking distance ;  System Administrator
;                                         ;  320.240.8243
;-----------------------------------------;