SUMMARY External disk question

From: Upkar Singh Kohli (upkar@wsu-eng.eng.wayne.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 02 1992 - 23:46:15 CST


My original question:

For the first I have to deal with a lost hard disk on a file server,
a Celerity. Yes, not Sun, but since we have changed our environment
to a "mostly Sun" network after we had had this Celerity, I am now
leaning toward getting external disk on Sun, rather than repairing
the old disk.
 
Since our fileservers are always loaded, we are in an emergency
situation to get a new disk. The issues are related to performance.
 
1. Would the Sun Workstation getting the new external disk be badly
   effected in terms of overall speed?
2. Does the brand of disk sought depend upon any criteria besides
   its capacity?
3. Any opinions on which disk we should buy (with 1-2 GB space?)

Here are the few (all useful) responses I received... Thanks to all
the respondents indicated below:

-------------------------------------------------------
fetrow@biostat.washington.edu

... HP, Fujitsu and Maxtor. When purchased through R Squared
and similar resellers, you get a five year warranty. They also charge a lower
price than Sun! The newer Suns can handle faster, synchronous SCSI transfers
so that's what you probably want....you generally get that for free with a
1 GB drive anyway.

 It's probably best to pick on one Sun themselves sell so that they won't
be able to say they don't support that model. I only have one drive (a
Maxtor) of that size but it hasn't given the slightest problem in the year
we've had it. If you are running SunOS 4.0 you may need to upgrade if you have
a drive > 1GB in size.

-------------------------------------------------------
kfp@sibyl.saic.com

...Sparcserver2 or 4/3xx or better it should not be a problem. You can also
consider adding a second disk controller, prestoserve, or Interphase NC,
each of which would add noticible performance improvements in a server
environment. (add all three for a super machine!)

...Call Peter Berens at Apunix (619)495-9229 (they may have an 800 number
too). He is an expert on disks and other Sun peripherals, and runs a truly
up-front and honest business. Their prices are competitive.

-------------------------------------------------------
birger@vest.sdata.no ( Birger Wathne)

The Elite 1 and Elite 2 disks seem to be very fast and reliable.
1.3 and 2.1 Gb formatted capacity.

I think Sun uses the Elite 1 as their 1.3Gb disk. But there are
cheaper sources...

--------------------------------------------------
Hanh Vu - xt 2801 <hanh@sol.cse.fau.edu>

...external disk for our Sun server, a Sun4/280. A lot of the third
party SCSI disks are pretty inexpensive (less than $3,000 for 1.6MB).
They also have a 5 year warranty and are just as fast and reliable as
disks from big names as Sun's and Hewlett-Packard. If you get Sun Expert,
there is a very informative article on page 48 about what to look
for in buying a disk drive. Also, NeXtWorld Spring 1992 issue
(the one with the "NeXtStep 3.0" shown on the display of a NeXt.)
has an article which features a list of external SCSI disks, their prices
and performance. If your machine has a SCSI port, the only thing
you have to worry about when connecting it up is that the SCSI number
of the new drive doesn't conflict with any other SCSI device you have
hooked up to that machine. SCSI is SCSI, so any SCSI disk should work
with your machine.

--------------------------------------------------
jsg@Rational.COM (J Scott Goldberg)

Andataco has a good product - a 1.5Gb drive that we get for about $2500.
Give them a call at 619-453-9191.



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