Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!ico!dougp
From: dougp@ico.isc.com (Doug Pintar)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: 1 Gigabyte drives
Message-ID: <1991Feb25.165601.25919@ico.isc.com>
Date: 25 Feb 91 16:56:01 GMT
References: <1991Feb20.220548.6054@news.larc.nasa.gov> <1991Feb23.201754.2275@cichlid.com>
Reply-To: dougp@ico.ISC.COM (Doug Pintar)
Distribution: na
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Boulder CO
Lines: 24

In article <1991Feb23.201754.2275@cichlid.com> aab@cichlid.com (Andy Burgess) writes:
>In article <1991Feb20.220548.6054@news.larc.nasa.gov> jka@radar0.larc.nasa.gov (J. Keith Alston) writes:
>>
>> Hello,
>>     I'm running interactive unix 2.2 and am looking into 1 Gb. SCSI
>>     drives. I have the Adaptec 1542A controller and am thinking about
>>     a Fujitsu drive because of the 5 yr warrenty. Anyone out there have
>>     any experience good or bad, with 1 Gb. drives under ISC 2.2? Any help
>>     would be appreciated.
>
>I am posting because I found a good price for Fujitsu drives recently.
>$1470 for 660Mb and $2266 for 1.2 Gb from R-squared, 415 438 0800.
>
I replied by mail to the original poster, but it's probably a good idea to
put this out to the net in general.  There has been a problem reported with
drives > 1GB, at least using the Adaptec 154x SCSI host adapter.  There seems
to be some sort of overflow problem such that all disk addresses are
interpreted as modulo 1 GB.  This means that the last 200 MB on a 1.2 GB drive
will wrap around to the beginning of the drive, trashing whatever is there.
This is being investigated.  As a temporary work-around, you can tell the
system that the drive is limited to 1024 virtual (1 MB) "cylinders" and things
seem to be ok.
Cheers,
DLP