#Hard Drive choices
10 messages in this thread
Greetings to everybody… I have a few questions about hard drives for the
Amiga… I have a ST296N with a Supra WordSync card that has served me very
well but is getting too full. I'm looking for a 3.5" drive of about the
same capacity (80Mb), hopefully in the $300 range. Can anyone tell me about
the reliability of the Seagate 3.5" drives? I recall being warned against
one company's smaller format drives, but I don't remember which. Any
suggestions? I was also planning to get the drive from ComputAbility.. are
there any mail-order stores that you prefer? Any other types of drives
(Quantum, Fujitsu, etc) that you would recommend? I guess I have to get a
straightforward SCSI drive to use with the WordSync card, but are there
advantages to other formats (IDE, etc?), about which I know nothing?
Thanks in advance…
Brian Warner 71076,1114 KC6ZPR warner@leland.stanford.edu
Brian,
The biggest problem with the Seagates is that they take too long to
spin up and become "ready" on cold start and with some host adapters it
means that you won't get the drive recognized on the first attempt. I'm
guessing that your WordSync isn't one of those host adapters…since you're
using it with a SeaGate now…but that doesn't mean that other SeaGates
won't.
There had been some problems a year or two ago with some of the
SeaGates, but it seems they have been worked out, as I've not heard much in
the way of complaints about them lately.
You can't use anything but a SCSI drive with your WordSync unless
you also buy a bus adapter that adapts other types of drives to a SCSI bus.
That's pretty much a waste of money since native SCSI drives (drives that
come already set up as SCSI drives) are pretty much the fastest on the
market when compared with equally priced drives of other types.
Don
Hmmm.. would that cold start spin-up time be the cause of my 2 minute boot
sequence? I have seen it sit there, with the drive's noise at a relatively
constant tone (which implies to me that the thing is up to speed), and yet
the screen shows white for at least 60 seconds before the startup-sequence
gets control.
Would you then recommend a different brand? What are the other brands?
I've heard of Quantum, not many others.
Thanks..
Brian
Brian,
Yes…that could be at least part of the cause of the delay. As to
brand, I personally like Conner drives, but lots of others like Quantum's
and still lots of others are perfectly happy with their SeaGates.
As to speeding up your cold boots…contact Supra (you did say you
had a WordSync..right?). They may have some ideas on how to speed things
up.
Don
Mr. Curtis is correct, the new driver is located completely in rom now, and
will greatly increase boot times. In some cases 3 to 4 times what the old
drive would do.
Kenny
Supra Technical Support
Brian:
Supra has new autoboot roms available for older WordSync controllers that
will DRAMATICALLY increase the speed of cold boots AND alow the controller
to work properly on an acellerated cpu with a slow Hard Drive (like a
Seagate).
– Whapping from the North Coast Michael
Well, thank you all. I will call Supra about those ROMs and see if they can
send me a pair. And if nobody has bad things to say about anybody's 3.5"
drives I'll just look for the cheapest price that's out there. thanks
again…
Brian 71076,1114
Brian,
_IMHO_, Seagate drives are not worth owning. They are noisey, slow to spin
up (which can cause delays in autobooting your system), and not the most
reliable available…. again, this is just my opinion based on pastuse of
seagates with a WordSync controller.
– Whapping from the North Coast Michael
OTOH, Seagate apparently bought out Imprimis (sp)… thier drives are fast,
spin up fast, and have proven to be pretty reliable in our experiance.
The slow spinup (autoboot delays) may in fact be a symptom of the
WordSync… I've heard that there may be some things you can do to help
speed that up, you might want to give Supra a call.
Keith
Keith, I no longer have the WordSync… but I did have it connected on a
2000 with a seagate 277N. The WordSync was fine, but the seagate took so
long to spin up that my 25MHz 68030 was looking for the boot partition WAY
before the drive was ready. Supra made a new set of autoboot roms
available that were 'smart' enough to wait for the drive to spin up to
speed.
The wordsync, when used with a quantum or conner is a very fast controller.
– Whapping from the North Coast Michael