Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!apple!usc!csun!srhqla!tcm
From: tcm@srhqla.SR.COM (Tim Meighan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 251 Wierdness
Keywords: Seagate, Miniscribe
Message-ID: <1112@srhqla.SR.COM>
Date: 24 Jul 89 18:22:41 GMT
Reply-To: tcm@srhqla.UUCP (Tim Meighan)
Distribution: na
Organization: Silent Radio, Los Angeles
Lines: 33

In article <89202.002238KDM101@PSUVM> KDM101@PSUVM.BITNET (Kevin Maher) writes:

>A question.....I would like to know how old the drives are that all of
>you are having problems with.  I have a ST-251-0 also, and had the same
>troubles that were mentioned in the articles here (the stuck heads, failure
>to spin up to speed.)  The drive is just over 2 years old.

[ . . . ]

>However, I've lost faith in seagate products, and in the future, I will
>buy some other brand (Possibly Miniscribe - hear anything bad about them?
>I'd like to know)

Here at work, we use Miniscribe 6032's (full-height 26-Meg) on a proprietary
OS.  We have 8 or 10 of them running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days
a year.  They crash and burn about once a year each.  (Fortunately, not all
at the same time!)  Note that these are not the particular Miniscribes that
are popular for PCs.  

BTW, I feel like a pretty lucky guy these days -- I've had a Seagate ST-251  
for about 2 years myself, and it has worked flawlessly.  I have never had
even a hiccup out of the thing.  I run it 6 to 8 hours a day.  Of course,
now that I've bragged about it, the drive will self-destruct any day . . .

A good thing to know about ST-251's -- they don't have a head locking system
of any kind, and the heads just land on the platters when you turn off the
power.  It's a good idea to move the heads to the last track before you
shut off your PC.

Tim Meighan
SilentRadio

"You can't fight in here!  This is the War Room!"