Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> It has been my experience that predictive support works relatively well
> for 79xx drives, but I don't think I've ever seen it report a problem with
> anything since.  I've lost 793x (Eagle) drives on a whim with no prelude,
> but have never had any problems with C2203 drives (as best as I recall).
> No problems with C3024T's either (after installation -- one came from the
> factory with one of the internal drives mis-cabled or mis-jumpered, I forget
> which) but we've only had them about a year.
>
> I'm hoping for good reliability with the new drives but your story concerns
> me.  I would hope that the SCSI gear is more reliable than HP-IB.
 
I m sorry to report that, just this last Sunday, our new (install Nov. 94)
C2490 disc  (part
#  C3044U) failed.  While storing off some databases, we got a DISC READ
FAILURE
on some of the datasets and a few minutes later we had a SA 1740 & System Abort
7.
When we tried to bring the system back up, the drive was  not available for
mounting."
 
HP came out the next day (fortunately it for us was a holiday) and tried to get
the drive to
work.  No such luck (they even tried swapping controllers).  The only thing
they could do
was install a new drive and reload the system.  It took 3 hours to restore from
the partial
backup and 8 hours to restore from the full backup (this was using TurboSTORE
II with
parallel option).  Of course we didn t have a backup for Friday or Saturday
(please learn
from our mistake and backup your Friday & Saturday work), so we lost those
days.
 
>
> One side note... I installed a DAT drive on our production system a couple of
> weeks ago, the newer 2-8Gb hardware-compression drives.  The first full
backup
> took two tapes and six hours.  Next time I ran
DEVCTRL(DEVCNTL?).MPEXL.TELESUP
> to specifically enable compression, and included MAXTAPEBUF on the :STORE
> command.  One tape, < 2.5 hours (approximate).  In contrast, using parallel
> 6250-bpi tape drives (two) we were running about 3 hours and 24 reels.
>
> [\] Jeff Kell, [log in to unmask]
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