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From: - Bobb - on 10 Jul 2010 10:17

"Paul" <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote in message
news:i18ou2$e8o$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>- Bobb - wrote:
>> Paul
>> I had d'loaded the WD diags but wasn't ready to wipe/test a nearly full 1
>> Tb drive yet.
>> I'll follow your links/ procedures. Thanks
>>
>> Just thinking ... on my second IBM pc I had a 40 MEGAbyte drive and
>> needed to make a copy of it. I started before bedtime - and it was still
>> going when we woke up. ( My first PC had dual floppy drives only - hard
>> drives weren't yet small enough. I used to work on 20MB drives in banks
>> etc that were the size of pizza ovens. Now I have a 1 Terabyte drive on
>> my desk - for $99 ! )
>>
>
> The first drives I got to play with, were 5MB and 10MB, full height
> drives.
> I didn't know it at the time, but I was reading recently, that those
> cost somewhere around $1400 each back in the day. We had a purchaser and
> a shipping department, so never got to see the price of things.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST-506
>
> And for floppies, we were using the 8" ones. The floppy drive had an
> AC motor, and required 120V to spin the floppies inside the sleeve. That
> was
> what each desktop system had in it, as well as one hard drive. Unlike
> modern
> systems, where all the wiring inside the computer is low voltage, it meant
> the
> floppy drive had to be spliced into the AC wiring.
>
> We used these for departmental file servers,
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/DysanRemovableDiskPack.agr.jpg

Same disk packs as for the 20/30 mb drives , but the technology got a lot
better thru the 80's and they could "fit more stuff onto them" to get 200mb
(RP06) then 300mb(RM05) on a pack. I made a lot of money fixing drives when
the heads crashed onto the disk surface. Even though the pack was maybe 20
inches in diameter, they only used the middle ~ 2 inches.

For those who care, the heads were spring loaded and if you spin the pack
fast enough (xRPM) it builds up a surface force/resistance. If/when anything
got in that space ( a few mm) then then "the stuff" would get between the
spring loaded head and the surface of that disk causing a "scrape" then
THOSE flakes would be in there causing more trouble, 'snowball going
downhill effect' and then a fault light as the drive spun down. I'd come
in - take it all apart, replace the 20 heads, realign all of them to be
perfectly in line again, then get cusotomer buys a new pack and ... all done
until next time. There was always a next time. Common example back of the
relationship between the heads and the surface was a 747 flying 400 MPH one
foot off the ground. Any undergrowth causes a crash.

>
> and these for backups.
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/9-track-drive-open.jpg
>

I used to work on those in the 80's - it's a Digital Equipment Corp (DEC)
Model TE16 - I was in field service for them then... and no kidding .. about
a month ago ... cleaning out some old papers and found a service report for
one. Company name / contact /phone number and description ... " TE16 - won't
load".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:9-track-drive.jpg

> We had a person hired full time, just to make tape backups and
> see they were put on a truck and shipped off site.
>
and when there was a problem with the drive .. they'd call ... me.

> Even back then, when people discovered we were using 9-track tape
> for backups, they'd give us a strange look. I was kinda curious
> where they were buying the transports, because I thought that
> was a dead technology. I suppose they were cheap.
>
> Paul

Cheap and easily portable. With a disk pack - it might only fit one model.
( like Blu-Ray, DVD, CD). With tape reel, if your computer room fried you
could take those tapes anywhere and rebuild your system. DEC started a
business doing just that (making computer rooms for 'hot sites') in the
90's, then spun it off to "Iron Mountain".

Now you just buy a few Tb drives and can leave them everywhere. But when
THEY go ... that's a lotta data gone.


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