Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!chinet!mcdchg!ddsw1!ddsw1!point!wek
From: wek@point.UUCP (Bill Kuykendall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: ARLL HD controllers; are they any good?
Message-ID: <[1431.2]comp.ibmpc;1@point.UUCP>
Date: 11 Aug 89 05:00:09 GMT
References: <4656@brains.UUCP> <1600@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Lines: 23

>ARLL HD controllers; are they any good?:

We have 2 Perstor controllers running in separate systems with Seagate ST-
4096 drives.  The 4096s format to about 76 meg MFM, 140 meg ARLL.  

Both of the techs that are testing the controllers have reported minor
problems that bother me more than a little bit.  Both systems periodically
"grind" while writing files.  The Perstor does a read-after-write-verify on
data it has written, and the grinding noise is caused by rewriting the same
sector several times while attempting to correct an error.  At first, these
episodes were always successful at writing the sector.  After several
months though, both techs have reported failures during writes.

If you're considering one of these controllers, there's one other piece of
information you need.  They don't work on all drives.  The company we
purchased the controllers from were also selling 'Perstor Certified' 4096s.
We purchased the first controller without a drive and tried 4 4096s before
we got one to format.  We then bought the certified drives to do our testing
with.  As far as I'm concerned, they failed the test.

I am also testing a WD 1006 SVR2 controller (with 2 4096s).  The drives
format to about 115 MB, and have worked beautifully so far (about 3 1/2
months now).