Re: Quantum Hard Drives

[m.kelsey@spam.eecs.wsu.edu]

In article <E0271.7528$z15.4328473@news21.bellglobal.com>,
	hwhkoiyd@usenet.com writes:
> 
> Lots of rumors on the premature failure of these drives and of the poor after-sales service. Anyone with an experience to share ?
> Please Post
> 

Everyone seems to have their own opinions of what drives are quality and 
which ones are junk.  I have had experience with SCSI and IDE flavours
of the following types:

Maxtor
Seagate
Conner
Micropolis
Western Digital
Quantum

I personally prefer to go with Micropolis, however, since they're now
out of business it wouldn't make much sense for a potential buyer.  
Western Digital produces very fast EIDE drives however they tend to have a
fairly high failure rate, usually within warranty.  Western Digital has
always been very helpful when I needed to RMA drives.  I would place the
consumer rate Western Digital drives on par with Mag Flat Screen monitors.
They're good quality for what you get but don't be surprised if you end
up swapping out with a newer product.  Western Digital will also step-up
on size larger if your failed drive is no longer available in their 
stock. 

Seagate has had a bad reputation and produces both quality and sub-par
drives.  E.g. their Medalist line is relatively slow.  Their higher end
server line drives are fast and have a better life expectancy.  I had
to have a 2.9G full-height drive serviced twice during its 3-year warranty.
Granted, this drive was only an Elite model and like most Seagate drives
3.5" or 5.25" generated a lot of heat.  I gave the drive away to a friend.
Of all the 3.5" form-factor drives I have dealt with, I have never needed
to send one back.  Some of their drives are quite noisy and I wouldn't
be surprised if you can hear the drive even after installation inside
a case.

Conner drives have always had a very good life expectancy however perfor-
mance is definately sub-par.  Conner was taken over by Seagate, so that
should answer any questions regarding Conner drives.  I have only dealt
with 500MB SCSI Conner drives and my inital 254MB IDE drive.  In all 
cases the Conner drives generated very low heat in comparison to other
drives.  I have seen but only one Conner SCSI drive fail and it was out
of a 3 year warranty by the time it stopped operating. 

Micropolis drives have always been very costly, however, the performance
reaped from these drives is quite substantial.  I picked up two 4G 3.5"
Micropolis drives for $191/each and I don't regret the purchase.  In all
the time I have used Micropolis drives I have never had one fail.  One
thing to note is that they do run very hot and will require proper cooling.
They are also very noisy, too, but spin a faster RPMs yielding better
sustained throughput.  I'm not too terribly impressed with the Micropolis'
performance with small files, perhaps a direct correlation with either
a small buffer or slow access time.  Due to Micropolis' exiting the 
manufacturing market, their more expensive models may be found at a
fraction of the MSRP.

I have a handful of Quantum drives that vary in size from 40MB to 100MB 
and had a 1G FireBall AT I bought, as well as a 1.0G and 1.2G SCSI Fireball
that I inherited.  The smaller drives were pulled from Macintosh computers
that were headed out the door.  The 1G EIDE I bought several years ago
out of recommendation from a ZD-Net review.  The 1.0G SCSI was identical
and performed above and beyond satisfaction with 2MB/sec write and 6MB
/sec read performance.  The 1.2G SCSI has been the only Quantum
hard drive I have ever had fail.  It wasn't performing anywhere near the
speed of the 1.0G SCSI when I receive the two; an indication it may have
been crippled by improper handling.  Regardless, I have always been very
pleased with the performance, heat levels, and quiet operation of Quantum
hard drives. 

IBM also OEM's a variety of other manufacturer's hard drives.  I have only
seen two SCSI IBM OEM drives, believed to be supplied by Quantum, and they
were quiet, low-heat and very high performance.

I hope this provides you with some useful feedback.
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reply to: mkelsey -at- eecs -dot- wsu -dot- edu