I would really be concerned with the driver if the diagnostics showed problems
with cornercases.  If the driver expects 4 GB but finds only 1 or 2, then the
driver is faulty.  SCSI-2 protocol provides for the drive giving that
information to the driver on demand.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   Dennis Heidner [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, July 06, 2000 8:17 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Seagate vs HP firmware on ST34573

Has anybody used sysdiag to exercise one of the drives ... really hammer
them and see if there are any problems?  I'd be worried about corner
cases in which a driver really expects to see a 4G drive but only finds
1 or 2GB.

The second is how does predictive and now STM react to the drive.  My
guess is that you would need to disable predictive support for the now
standard device.

On newer IDE and SCSI (last couple of years only), the industry has been
starting to adopt a standard called S.M.A.R.T,  which is supposed to be
a uniform method to track surface defects, rpm, and tracking problems.
The standard is supposed to allow the OS's to poll a device looking for
potential problems (sounds like predictive again).  I tried about four
different products for PC's again Predictive monitoring software... and
discovered that in many cases it drive margins were set real loose.
Almost let anything go.. don't report an error.

This is one area that I could see as a difference with the HP labelled
drives IF they require tighter tolerances AND have the S.M.A.R.T table
entries to match...

Wirt Atmar wrote:
>
> Denys chastises:
>
> > Sigh.  Ok, let me put it more plainly.  You wasted a lot of time figuring
> out
> >  what kind of disk drive you had.  As I explained, probably not well, with
> > SCSI
> >  devices on MPE, the only thing you really need to know is if the device is
> > SE
> >  or Differential.  If the disk is Single Ended, you know where to plug it
> in
> > and
> >  you use any of the SE disk IDs from IODFAULT.PUB.SYS.  The disk will come
> up
> >  and be usable.
>
> I know that now , but at the time, I didn't. And that was the time waster --
> figuring out that SYSGEN's device ID field is nowadays essentially ignored,
> even though the IODFAULT file is filled with choices for you use, with even
> more choices apparently available on the system (such as the Quantum
> Fireball), but not listed.
>
> Wirt ("IODFAULT lies in ourselves, not in our stars") Atmar