Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpfcso!hplvec!calloway
From: calloway@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Frank Calloway)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: IDE drives: good or evil?
Message-ID: <12070002@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM>
Date: 21 Mar 91 16:14:31 GMT
References: <12492@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO
Lines: 16

I recently needed a replacement for a Miniscribe 3085 drive that had
been giving me problems for over a year.  After a bit of shopping
around, I bought a Toshiba MK234FCH IDE drive plus host adapter card
from Hard Drives International for $499.  This was my first experience
with IDE, but the installation went okay (no thanks to the documentation
supplied by Hard Drives International) and the drive works well.  I got
117 MBytes under DOS 4.01 and a data tranfer rate of just over 800K,
as measured with Coretest on my HP Vectra QS/16 computer (16 Mhz '386).

As others have commented about IDE drives, my Toshiba is so quiet you
can't hear it run.  I still find myself looking at the drive activity
LED simply to see if anything is happening.  It works great, and
according to PC Magazine's findings, the Toshiba drive should be
reliable.

Frank Calloway