Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!udel!burdvax!bbking!rmarks
From: rmarks@KSP.Unisys.COM (Richard Marks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Maxtor drive experience ?
Message-ID: <666@bbking.KSP.Unisys.COM>
Date: 3 Feb 89 14:50:25 GMT
References: <221@wa3wbu.UUCP>
Organization: Unisys/Knowledge Systems Organization, Frazer, PA
Lines: 34

In article <221@wa3wbu.UUCP> john@wa3wbu.UUCP (John Gayman) writes:
>    Does anyone have any experience to relate on Maxtor 1140 disk
>  drives ?  I'd be interested in any info, good or bad. Thanks.


We have had good experiences with the XT-1140.

We have 17 XT-1140's in our various Lisp Machines, 6 total in three of
our Unix boxes, and another 3 or 4 in PC's (inclding this one).  Low
failure rate.  The Maxtor salesman said a 30,000 mtbf and I think he means
it.  We lose about two disks a year out of the above 27.  Those have only
been from the Lisp machines by the way, random luck or maybe the Lisp boxes
stress the disks more.

Cost from Maxtor is around $1925.  Repair cost is about $750 for entire
reconditioning and $185 if just the circuit board goes.  This is for
fairly slow service.  Expedited service is an extra charge, I forget how
much.  Costs were from a year ago, may have changed.

I ran some timing tests with the XT-1140 on a 386 PC.  I used the standard
controller (not SCSI or ESDI or RLL).  I compared it to a 40 meg (fast) CDC
disk on a 286 box.  

                  8mb sequnetial create     1000 random accesses
     286 CDC           49 secs                   203 secs
     386 Maxtor        65 secs                   195 secs

As one see, the Maxtor can be slower. This sometimes shows on program startup
from disk.  The 386 is a tad slower to get a program going then the 286.
(I know about RAM disk but that is not the subject).  Does anyone have hard
data on other large disks on PC's??

Richard Marks
rmarks@KSP.unisys.COM