RE: EMC DASD (wasCISC to RISC conversion of data)

   Normally, I just sort of lurk and watch on this list, but I felt I needed
to put my two cents in on the EMC DASD question. About a year and a half
ago, a client of mine lost their entire machine (287 gig of EMC DASD) due to
a raid 5 check.

   Our only solution was to initialize all the drives go back to Sunday
morning backups and start spinning. EMC was virtually no help through all of
this. It took a long time before the staff was able to recover from the
bouts of sickness we all went through (worst case of bronchitis in my life.
I would have rather died and I couldn't take time off for a while) due to
virtually no sleep for a week and a half while trying to catch up as well as
the two weeks we spent fixing all the files due to the shortcuts we had to
take to spin partial cycles. It was a financial institution and no system
meant no money.

    While you mention that customers are all not that stupid, this may be
true. They can be rather cheap though. When you look at the statistics...
The drives are faster and cheaper than IBM's, customers salivate. That's
until the inevitable happens. You get what you pay for.

    IMHO, anyone who buys non-IBM DASD for the 400 deserves the result. Of
course, if you can mirror, it's the way to go. It's the way that client went
as well.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Dave Mahadevan
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 1998 11:06 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: EMC DASD (wasCISC to RISC conversion of data)


Neil:

Neil Palmer wrote:

> So, IMHO, the reason 3rd party disk is cheaper, is because IT'S NO BLOODY
GOOD
> !!!!

I hate to disagree with this statement.  But the truth is EMC DASD is as
good
as.  They have grabbed a huge market share and growing by leaps and bounds.
The
customers are all not that stupid, right?  I have used their DASD without
trouble.  OTOH, 3 of my 9332-600 failed.   Everybody of course knows the
fantastic unreliability of 9335.   Blanket statements like this only cause
misunderstanding.  I believe all DASD manufacturers try their best.   I do
believe that mirroring now is the best choice considering the price of DASD
in
general to avoid disk crashes (been there done that).

--
Thank You.

Regards

Dave Mahadevan.. mailto:mahadevan@fuse.net


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