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Date:      Sun, 3 Sep 1995 23:41:20 -0700
From:      Pete Delaney <pete@RockyMountain.rahul.net>
To:        rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com, karl@mcs.com
Cc:        karl@mcs.net, pete@RockyMountain.rahul.net, pete@kesa26.kesa.com, wally%wally@pdss.com, jbryant@argus.iadfw.net, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, pete@rahul.net
Subject:   Re: 4GB Drives - Another Hawk bits the dust after a a short 3 month flight; Loading NetBSD !
Message-ID:  <199509040641.AA17202@RockyMountain.rahul.net>

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Karl/Rodney:

   > > > I like the Seagate Hawk series, and the 'Cudas *IF YOU CAN KEEP THEM COOL*.

More like air conditioned.

   > > 
   > > The Hawk is okay, and already stated as my model of choice on a price/size/
   > > performance/reliabity point at the 4G mark.  The Barracuda is off the
   > > bottom of the scale given the ``KEEP THEM COOL'' requirement and the
   > > significant initial product failure rates from Seagate gave them a very
   > > bad name in many communities.  Even though Seagate has corrected the head
   > > meltdown/media flake problem that sour taste remains in many peoples 
   > > mouths.
   > 
   > I have no problem meeting environmental requirements as long as I know what
   > they are!  In the case of the 'Cudas, I do.

Maybe SeaCrate would have a lot of headackes by adding a warning note that their
drives are substantially more sensitive to the ambient temperature than other 
drives.


   > 
   > > that was not specifically designed to handle the heat dissapation of
   > > the Barracuda.  SGI's official statement is ``don't put them inside
   > > the system boxes, but them in external enclosures''.  AAC's official
   > > statement is ``don't use them at all''.
   > 
   > Our official statement is "Install only in our 4-drive enclosures" (which
   > have five fans :-))  Case temperature never exceeds 82 degrees F if you do
   > this; we have a pyrometer and check such things.
   > 
   > On the other hand, they will reach in excess of 120 F in a typical PC case,
   > and at that temp they WILL fail.

Great, they must have used wax to hold the head on.  The Installation guide says
that the ambient termperature should be 50 C (122 F) which is close to your 120 F is only 48.89 C.
They quote the HDA temperature as being 60 C (140 C). I assume that HDA is The temperature
on the surface of the drive. I recall the maximum surface temperature on the Micropolus 1.0Gb
was 160 C.

In Germany I had some problems with Fujitsu drives running hot and started my current
approach of adding a rather large (20W) fan in the Pizza Box where the floppy drive
usually goes. This keeps the drives very cool, about 5 C from the ambient.  I found the
Hawk only running luke warm (85 .. 95 F), when I checked it a few times. I wonder if a
major factor isn't the rate of rotation, but rather the disk head activity. I doubt that
I the drive was very busy when I checked the temperature. In the past I've always 
found the terperature independant of the drive activity. Why else would the problem
have occured after doing some heavy disk I/O?


   > 
   > --
   > --
   > Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - The Finest Internet Connectivity
   > Modem: [+1 312 248-0900]     | (shell, PPP, SLIP, leased) in Chicagoland
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   > Fax: [+1 312 248-9865]       | Email to "info@mcs.net" WWW: http://www.mcs.net
   > ISDN - Get it here TODAY!    | Home of Chicago's *Three STAR A* Clarinet feed!

I'm a Beta for the ZyXEL ISDN modem, I expect it to arrive shortly.

-pete



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