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From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,unix-pc.general
Subject: Re: 3b1 40meg disk woes: Help
Message-ID: <17606@cup.portal.com>
Date: 26 Apr 89 05:46:18 GMT
References: <3961@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> <17513@cup.portal.com> <542@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>
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Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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Without wishing to cause Daniel Levy too much concern ...

In regards to Miniscribe, I've had two Miniscribe 8438 drives go belly up
on me during the past 5 months (on another computer).  The problem is NOT
a "my drive don't spin" problem; I have these sitting on a shelf in my lab
awaiting further analysis.  Luckily (for me), there are several companies
in this area (Silicon Valley) that do disk drive repair, and I may avail
myself of their services.

Also in regards to Miniscribe: have people forgotten so quickly the HORRIBLE
problems with the IBM PC/AT when it first came out?  The problems were flaky
HDs, and the HDs were those manufactured by Miniscribe.

Miniscribe is located in Longmont, Colorado, and is NOT affiliated with 
Seagate in any way.

Now, on the positive side: I have a Miniscribe 6085 in my 3B1, and it has
operated (almost) flawlessly for 2 years now, at 24 hours/day, 7 days/week.
The "almost" is one sector that "grew bad" one morning; took a few minutes
to fix that problem, and I'll be posting a (lengthy) treatise about sparing
out bad blocks very shortly (I'm presently working 14-16 hours/day in prep
for the DECUS/DEXPO coming up during the 2nd week in May).

In conversation with several companies (the disk drive repair outfits), the
problem with the non-spin Seagate drives is due to "stiction" caused by
excessive chemical lubricant on the plated-media platters during manufacture.
Their (the repair companies') solution is to replace the Seagate media with
"normal" oxide media (for approx. $60 for an ST-251 drive).  The Seagate
stiction problem (lubricant meniscus preventing the heads leaving PARK
position) seems to occur across the board with Seagate's 3-1/2" and 5-1/4"
HDs manufactured using plated-media platters; the older ferric-oxide platter
drives (such as the ST-225 drive) don't exhibit the problem.

Seagate's problem is (was) a lack of proper QA; I understand they've recently
taken steps to improve the situation.

Miniscribe's problem seems to (also) be in the past (but it's a real pisser
when it's one's own drive that exhibits the problem).

As a general note in closing, and this *IS* a general note, I casually asked
some people at the various disk drive repair companies what drives they put
in their OWN computers, and 3 manufacturers' names clearly were in the
majority: Maxtor, Quantum, and Micropolis.  Conner and SONY were also spoken
of highly, but there isn't much "track record" yet.

Thad Floryan [thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad]