Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!CC.UTAH.EDU!BOB%HOWARD%CENTER
From: BOB%HOWARD%CENTER@CC.UTAH.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: System Industries Disks
Message-ID: <8708050558.AA12506@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Tue, 4-Aug-87 06:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8708050558.AA12506
Posted: Tue Aug  4 06:52:00 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Aug-87 03:43:40 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 42

>We are looking to purchase some more disks for our VAXCluster. We,
>in the past, have bought RA series disks. Now, SI makes MSCP disks that
>are definitely much faster than RA disks. Does anyone have any experience
>(positive or negative) with SI C series disks connected to HSCs?
>

   We made the mistake of purchasing System Industry disks and have been
paying for it over and over again. Our observations are that System Industry
doesn't appear to take the time to design the things right in the first place
and when they do break (not IF but WHEN), SI hasn't a clue what to do to fix
them. More than once I've called them and they will come out, scratch their
heads and say... "let's replace this board and then let us know if that works!"
Great! What good is a disk if you can't trust the data on it. What's worse,
the disks we have seem to corrupt or lose files even after they have passed the
lame SI diagnostics. So when someone does discover that a file has been wrecked
it actually occured months ago. Try sifting through months of backup tapes 
looking for the last version of the file that wasn't corrupt. Basically, we're 
stuck with the disks and we only use them for temporary stuff that we can 
afford to lose (read ... we don't use them). If you think that it's just that 
we got a lemon, think again. SI has replaced everything two or three times and 
they still won't work right. They don't have a clue what to do to fix them.

  When it came time for us to buy the last set of disks we did some serious 
analysis, SI was cheaper per megabyte than DEC but when you took into account
the maintenance over five years DEC won! (Amazing isn't it) Anyway, Ours is not
the first Hughes site to have problems with the disks. When I talked to other
sites within Hughes they all agreed that SI is not worth getting unless it's
the absolutly last thing you can do... and even then don't do it.

  The bottom line is that I wouldn't buy System Industry disks on a bet. If you
really want to talk about how bad they are send me mail and we'll get on the
phone together. (They are so dumb that they once (and only once) refered us to 
a potential customer as a reference after the disks had been up and down for
six months and then couldn't figure out why the customer didn't buy their
disks.)

If you think I'm being hard on SI, give me a call, I've got a bunch of disks
to sell you... real cheap.


	Bob Wheeler
	Howard Hughes Medical Institute