Hello, Roy.  I'm almost up to being 2 weeks behind in my Fido-postings.

About that writeup from Drive Service Company which I posted here for
info - -

 RJT> I've seen this before.  Maybe there were slightly different models in
 RJT> the lists,  that time,  but more or less the same stuff.  And the same
 RJT> style. Maybe even a copy,  I dunno.  I have a slight problem with some
 RJT> points of this that make me wonder about the credibility of the rest of
 RJT> it.

Yes, I found a version of the same from 2001, and many of the words were
the same, but a few changes.

 JH> as of 06-19-02
 RJT> 02?  A bit dated,  isn't it?  Maybe it _was_ the same list?

Oops!  My bad.  I was in a hurry when I found it on the internet, and I
was thinking that it was an update from _this_ year.  This 2002 version
was likely posted previously either here or somewhere like the Win9x
echo.  I'd think he is a bit overdue for an update, but his colourful
website identifies this article as "HOT!"

 JH> Visit our home page for expert Data Recovery Services! And... Take
 JH> a look at our new Data Recovery Software offerings!

 RJT> Right...

 RJT> If a drive is trashed,  no software by itself is going to deal with
 RJT> that issue.
 RJT>  Not very likely,  anyhow.  And companies that do data recovery for a
 RJT> business don't tend to sell software for the same purpose.

I guess this one does, and a quick look there indicates that what they
are selling may be a bit safer and more thorough than stuff like Norton
Disk Doctor.

 RJT> What _can_ be recovered from a drive that is working where the
 RJT> supporting filesystem has gotten trashed is another story,  and perhaps
 RJT> that's what he's talking about,  but it isn't presented that way.

It is presented more that way at their website.  (website looks rather
psychedelic, and was hard on my eyes).

 JH> This is based on the models we see the most, and conversely the
 JH> drives we see the least.

 RJT> What else is pertinent here is how many of any given type are out
 RJT> there.  If some particular drive models are selling *really* well,  and
 RJT> there are a ton of them out there,  then there are also going to be
 RJT> more of them showing up in places that do drive repairs.  But he
 RJT> doesn't seem to take that into account. I don't believe for a minute
 RJT> that all of those mfr's have equal market share.

Yes, that aspect has been discussed here in TECH before.  I didn't see
any clues that the author had considered market share.

 JH> desktop drives. There are issues with electro-mechanica failures
 JH> and or head crash on their high speed IDE drives 40GB or greater.

 RJT> ANY drive failure is gonna either be electrical or mechanical,  no?
 RJT> :-)
 RJT> Personally,  I'd put "head crash" into the "mechanical"
    category...

Author isn't going to win any prizes for the clarity of his writing.
Maybe he was trying to say something, but the meaning gets lost in the
fog.

 JH> But, you might ask, "What am I supposed to use for duty business
 JH> use?". The answer is, use what we have used for years in
 JH> applications and that is SCSI! SCSI drives are meant to run and
 JH> run an without a hiccup. They are made much better than IDE, using
 JH> better liqu motors, better parts, and usually better everything!
 JH> So, the next deciding what to use in a server that you are
 JH> building, think twice abo

 RJT> Poor spelling and syntax aside,  this is hogwash.

Seems unlikely here that the author just made that part up (see below).
AAMOF, since he is in the data recovery business, a cynical view would
have him either staying silent or not pointing out at all that some
drives appear to be more reliable than others.

But I will take the blame for most of the spelling errors.  I saved it
off of the website as a textfile, and when I started working with it in
word processor, I had to change fonts, and then it wouldn't fit for the
characters per line as Fidonet postings need.  A lot of words which were
at ends of lines got truncated, and some short words lost altogether.  I
saw that before I inserted it as a textfile, but was to lazy to fix all
of those myself, and I concluded that the gist of what he was writing
was fairly clear.

 RJT> The *ONLY*
 RJT> difference between ATA and SCSI drives is in the electronics,  the
 RJT> mechanical assemblies are identical.  Or at least that's the last I
 RJT> remember hearing about it,  and I doubt that's changed much.  It may be
 RJT> that higher-end models will be more likely to be sold in SCSI first,
 RJT> for server and other higher-end business apps,  but once the technology
 RJT> is out there a while then the pricing pressures of the consumer and OEM
 RJT> markets will push the price of ATA drives downward.

I just got a new edition of Scott Mueller's book (skipped from the 12th
Ed. to the 15th Ed.  He says in there that a number of HDD manufacturers
use identical HDA (head-disc assemblies) for IDE and SCSI drives of the
same capacity.  I do know also that some mfgrs have more than one line
of drives, and that SCSI offerings include some of the very largest
capacities and highest disc RPM's.  It would be interesting to see
some of the specs on IDE and SCSI drives from same mfgr, particularly
when it comes to those MTBF numbers they put out, but I'm not
interested enough in it to look into it myself.


ttyl - - -  JimH.


... You're Olde when your're older than your doctor, preacher and president.
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