200mb SCSI drives

2007-12-25 7:20:00

I wrote last week asking about internal 200Mb SCSI drives for the 4/60.

Many respondents indicated that both the Quantum PRO210 and the Conner

3200F were good drives. Other people reported good results with the

Maxtor LXT200S (and now 213S) and the Fuji M2246.

I ended up buying the Quantum drive from APS (Alliance Peripheral

Systems) for $799 including Sparc mounting bracket and cables. 2nd-day

shipping brought the total to ~$815. APS deals mainly in Mac drives.

However, they have a good reputation for customer service and tested the

drive for 24hrs before shipping. Since the drive had a Mac format on it

(different checksum), I had to reformat when it arrived, but formatting

went quickly.

The main area of concern was that some of the 200Mb drives generate a

significant amount of heat (more than the 4/6[05] was designed to

handle). However, nobody actually reported heat-related problems, and

several indicated using the drives without incident. Personally, I've

decided not to mount a 2nd internal drive in the 4/60 as long as the

Quantum 210 is there. When mounting the drive, people suggested that

the "middle" drive position is cooler than the one in the corner. Also,

the Conner drive reportedly runs the coolest of the available drives.

Some people reported PROM compatibility problems with some Quantum

drives. The new PRO210 I received from APS boots fine on a 4/60.

I asked about format.dat entries also. I got several drastically

different entries for the drives (especially for the Quantum). Since

the intelligence is built onto the drive, the exact geometry specified

seems to make little difference so long as the totals are correct.

Here is the formatting information I received:

1> disk_type = "Conner-CP3200" \

1> : ctlr = MD21 \

1> : trks_zone = 9 : atrks = 2: asect = 4 \

1> : ncyl = 1346 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1348 : nhead = 8 : nsect = 38 \

1> : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 19456

2>For the Conner, I use cyl 1382 alt 2 hd 8 sec 37

3> disk_type = "Conner CP3200F" \

3> : ctlr = MD21 : fmt_time = 1 \

3> : cache=0 : asect = 5 : atrks = 0 \

3> : ncyl = 1364 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1366 : nhead = 8 : nsect = 38 \

3> : rpm = 3755 : bpt = 16896

4>For the Quantum, use the SUN207 entry (1254/2/9/36)

5>For the Quantum:

5> 987 cylinders

5> 7 heads

5> 59 sectors/track

Thanks again for everyone's help.

-David


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David P. Maynard (dpm@cs.cmu.edu)
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
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