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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Disc reliability
Message-ID: <2880@phri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Aug-87 23:17:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.2880
Posted: Thu Aug 27 23:17:49 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 13:28:18 EDT
References: <1246@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <768@custom.UUCP> <202@ttrdd.UUCP> <261NU013809@NDSUVM1> <15376@onfcanim.UUCP>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 22
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.ibm.pc:7214 comp.misc:1125

In article <15376@onfcanim.UUCP> dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes:
> We have a VAX with a few Fujitsu Eagles on it.  The specified MTBF for
> these drives is 40000 hours (about 4.5 years) [...]  On the other hand,
> we have a few workstations with Vertex 70 Mb hard disks (5 1/4 inch full
> height) that seems to have a MTBF of something under 1 year.

	First off, Fuji Eagles (2351's) are (at least as far as I'm
concerned) the yardstick by which disk drive reliability is measured.
Their service record is famous in the industry.  Not all big disks do so
well, any many do far worse.  Consider, for example, the DEC RA-81.  We've
had an RA-81 for about three years.  We're on our third HDA, which was
recently reformatted because of too many soft errors, and it looks like
this HDA is going to be replaced soon.  Other RA-81 owners will tell you
similar tales of woe.

	Second, your Eagles are probably running in an air-conditioned
clean environment and your Vertex's are probably in somebody's office and
thus subject to considerably more environmental strain.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016