SCSI Disks

[Mike Bilow]

Brian Ristuccia wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 BR> I can give you info on the reseller that has these
 BR> refurbished drives if you're interested. A friend of mine
 BR> has been using refurbished drives with his Alpha for quite
 BR> some time now. The only problem was (recently) that the
 BR> drive ran out of "spare" allocation units. I don't know if
 BR> these 1991's support automatic relocation, but it would make
 BR> me feel very much more comfortable about purchasing one if
 BR> this feature is present. 

Yes, they support automatic reallocation.  However, a drive running out of
spares is a bad sign: it means that the drive is slowly dying, and that sectors
are going bad since the most recent low-level format.

Under Linux, you can tune whether automatic reallocation is enabled on write,
read, or both using the Scsiinfo tool.  You can also change the number of spare
sectors reserved for reallocation during a low-level formatting with that tool.
 However, you had better really know what you are doing with Scsiinfo, since
you can make the drive inaccessible if you write bad params.

With the Linux Second Extended filesystem, you should initially force the call
of the "badblock" utility with the "-c" switch from e2fsck.  This will make
sure that every sector is tested for read access.

 BR> If I could afford a tape drive, I'd have bought this thing a
 BR> long time ago. Then again, if I had enough money for a tape
 BR> drive, I'd probably have enough to not have to buy
 BR> refurbished drives either. 

There are some nice DAT autochangers for $279 at "http://www.jembasement.com".
I have the Archive/Conner/Seagate 4586 working with the changer support module
under Linux; drop me a note off-list if you have trouble.
 
-- Mike