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From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Who's got the biggest SCSI drive actually functioning
Message-ID: <1990Jul4.035345.18031@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Date: 4 Jul 90 03:53:45 GMT
Organization: SF Bay Public-Access Unix
Lines: 45

Some folks I know have a 600Mbyte SCSI drive available at a price
reasonable to me, but don't know the Amiga from a pile of sand.
So here are a few of things I'd like to learn from the available
wisdom of the net:

1) What's the biggest SCSI drive anyone has up and running, say
   for at least a couple of months to make sure it's stable?

2) Does the software Commodore supplies with 1.3 suffice to
   low/high level format such a beast, or does the vendor have
   to know enough about the Amiga to supply some software to
   do the job -- i.e., can I just buy hardware?

3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard that
   force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, or can
   I just make it one huge tree?

4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good reasons for
   making it several smaller ones instead?

5) Has anybody got experience with a streaming tape backup that
   runs on the Amiga and can back this sucker up on one tape?
   Vendor, prices, software used/needed?

6) Rewritable video disk technology is available for the Amiga
   now, but the storage (per diskette) is no greater than this
   magnetic drive, and the best price I've seen for the video
   disk is around $9K, a bit steep for an unemployable graphics
   programmer's budget.  I'd rather go with the video technology,
   to get the replaceable media (great for archiving news forever),
   protection from head crashes, and generally whizzy feel, but I'm
   getting impatient for prices to fall; does anyone know of a
   better price or imminent prospects of same for video?

7) Is the $2500 price for the magnetic disk I'm being quoted a "good
   deal"?  ;-)  These folks are amateurs in the extreme, so I want
   to make sure I'm saving a lot before I accept the attendant risk.

Email would probably be a good idea, and I'll summarize back in two
weeks or so.

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
--
(Who really shouldn't be thinking about spending more money, but...)