Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!rutgers!sunybcs!boulder!garth
From: garth@sigi.Colorado.EDU (Garth Snyder)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Need info on Mac MIDI and Jasmine
Summary: Alternate viewpoint: LaCie drives considered Great!
Message-ID: <7045@sigi.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 10 Jul 88 22:32:32 GMT
References: <127200033@inmet> <17000117@clio>
Reply-To: garth@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Garth Snyder)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 31


	In article <17000117@clio brewer@clio.las.uiuc.edu writes:
	
	... The Cirrus has gotten good marks all around for their small size,
	nice case, and excelent worksmanship. The LaCie 80 has the fastest
	access time of any external I have seen (18 ms). It uses the Quantum
	drive, with their special DisCache buffer (64K of RAM that caches
	each track as it is read). All in is a good drive...
	
	The problems occur with the driver software. In general, it looks
	pretty slick, with multiple, automount, password-protectable
	partitions, that can be accessed from a DA. BUT, there is a _MAJOR_
	fatal flaw in their driver. If for any reason you are forced to do a
	'dirty' restart (like hitting the programmers switch, or pulling the
	plug) it trashes the disk directory. Your drive will not boot after a
	'dirty' restart.
	
This sounds like one hosebag of a situation, and my intent is not to
defend LaCie on this count.  However, I'd like to put in a pitch for my
Cirrus 60 external, which has never given me an instant of trouble in the
year that I've owned it.  The software is the same (Silver Lining), but
it works flawlessly on the 60 Meg drive (and presumably the 20 and 40, as
well).  

It's very fast and small, and I've carried it around to all kinds of
places without incident.  Check it out.

--------------------
Garth Snyder                 UUCP: boulder!garth
Univ. of CO @ Boulder        ARPA: garth@boulder.colorado.edu
--------------------