Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ogccse!blake!uw-beaver!fluke!mce
From: mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Number of writes on an optifloppy
Message-ID: <6011@fluke.COM>
Date: 16 Nov 88 18:40:14 GMT
References: <8646@spl1.UUCP> <568@poseidon.ATT.COM> <7377@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Organization: SRS Recursive Software, Castrovalva, WA
Lines: 29

korn@eris.berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) writes:
>In <568@poseidon.ATT.COM>, ech@poseidon.ATT.COM (Edward C Horvath) said:  
>>From article <8646@spl1.UUCP>, by sarge@metapsy.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode):
>> 
>>estimated the number of writes before breakdown at 1 to 10 million.
>>
>>Probably enough, if the estimate is correct.
>
>????  This is considered enough?
>
>Lesse here.  Assuming I'm using the Optical drive as my main drive (as I
>might well on the NeXT box) [...]  That would allow me to run the 
>system this hard for anywhere between 6 days and 60 days before I have to 
>replace the disk.

A good analysis.  Jobs & Co. have said that it is "possible" to run a NeXT box
without a hard disk or fileserver, but why anyone would do that?  You and I
might want to in order to save some money when buying a single machine, but
NeXT won't sell to us.  In the targeted university market, every NeXT will be
on a network and swap over ethernet to a file server.  To be sure, they should
emphasis this, but hey, pointing out your own bad points has never been the
American Way.  :-)

If a commercial (i.e. single-user) NeXT is ever sold, it will have a hard
disk.  But that's still several years in the future, if at all...


Brian McElhinney
mce@tc.fluke.com