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From: William R. Walsh on 9 Feb 2010 11:40
Hi!

> Fujitsu desktop drives?  Did Fujitsu ever make any desktop
> drives since the start of the SATA era?

I've never seen a SATA Fujitsu desktop drive, but like you, I have yet
to see everything. :-)

> Fujitsu made low-capacity PATA drives, up to
> 10GB or so, but I've never seen anything larger.

I have several 15.1 (!!!) GB desktop PATA drives from Fujitsu. Almost
all are bad, and most run fine when cold, after which the controller
quits. (They're not the infamous Cirrus Logic based drives.)

The geometry label on the drive suggests that a 30GB version was made,
as several models are listed. Never seen one.

> Fujitsu server-class SCSI drives are also very good.

I think they are still in this business, although I couldn't swear to
it.

As it is, I've got a set of 15K RPM SCA drives in an IBM PS/2 Model 95
driven by an IBM MCA SCSI fast/wide adapter (the so-called "Corvette
Turbo" adapter with SE internal bus and HVD external).

Oh, it flies. Fun machine to work with. All fast, all wide, all the
time.

> Maxtor's acquisition of Quantum's drive business sacrificed
> quality products for schlock.

Maxtor had good quality drives? Could have fooled me. I remember
looking at the MTBF specs of an LXT-340A some years back and laughing.
Turns out it was true, I had one of those bricks given to me and its
reliability was awful.

I have a few Maxtor drives that continue to go on and on, but most of
the ones I've seen are junk or very soon to be.

It's a funny thing those Quantum drives...given that they were made by
Panasonic, I'd have expected much more. While a great many have died,
I still have a few (including some that are Quantum/Panasonic drives
with Maxtor labeling) that are running right along.

> Seagate's acquisition of Maxtor remains somewhat of a mess,
> and I think it has hurt Seagate's reputation.

Agreed 100%.

> Hitachi lost nothing when it bought IBM's drive business.

And they're making some very good drives these days, or so it seems
anyway.

> Time will tell about the Toshiba buy of Fujitsu's drives.

I am hoping that Toshiba will take up Fujitsu's drive manufacturing
and engineering lines, as I've always had very good luck with Fujitsu
laptop drives. Unfortunately, I fear that the worst of each product
line will be merged into one.

William
From: Ben Myers on 9 Feb 2010 14:23
"Maxtor's acquisition of Quantum's drive business sacrificed
quality products for schlock." By this, I intended to say that the
Quantum drives were better than the Maxtors. Especially SCSI once
again. Cross my fingers here, but the only serious drive failure I ever
had was a large full-height Maxtor SCSI, back in the day. The damned
drive always ran hot, and it finally burned itself out. Cost me a few
hundred bucks to get the data back. The company that did the "data
recover" simply replaced the PCB on the drive and sent it back with a
note telling me to get my data off the drive, quickly or even quicker.

Quantum had some major OEM customers including DEC and Apple. They also
had an OEM deal with Compaq, resulting in the lamentable Quantum Bigfoot
drives showing up in the equally lamentable Compaq Presarios of the
time. This was just after the merger of DEC into Compaq, and Compaq
continued to run the DEC electronics and computer recycling operation in
NH. As DEC did, they put up surplus for blind bids with one-line
descriptions. I was the lucky (HA!) winner of a bunch of Qunatum 4.3GB
Bigfeet. I ran all of them through tests and sold on eBay the ones that
passed the test. I guess I could have sold the bad ones too. As
anchors for small boats, or maybe as sinkers for whaling... Ben Myers
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