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seems that I have to make some more comments...
MO Cartridge Reliability:
-------------------------
I have been using > 80 230Mb Mo disks with 130 users in our facility for
nearly 2 years now. So far I have not yet had a single MO disk crash due to
hardware failure (even after some people played frisbee with their disks -
which would have killed every Zip or Syquest or HD).
I have had a couple of users who had corrupted their disks quite badly by
not repairing them after several computercrashes. This is clearly a
user-failure and doesn't add to the reliability of the MO technology. A
simple diskrepair program like Norton Disk Doctor (in Norton Utilities) or
Disk First Aid, can easily prevent this kind of problems if run regularly.
MO Drive reliability:
---------------------
I have had 2 out of >15 Fujitsu 230 drives that went bad, after 18months of
everyday fulltime usage (they rarely get turned off here), and I believe it
is because our users don't really care and slash the disks in with brute
force. The drives in individual labs that are used in a more normal fashion
have even a better record. I have no real statistics on ZIP and Syquest as
we here mainly use MO technology.
Cellquest 3.01f Problems:
-------------------------
I have to add that (besides Netscape and Internet Explorer..) Cellquest
3.01f has a (known) problem that corrupts the B-tree on the disks once it
crashes (and it sometimes does, as many of you know...), therefore people
should check their disks EACH time after Cellquest crashed with the MO disk
inserted (also you should check your FACStation HD every morning
routineously to avoid this kind of problems).
This B-Tree corruption problem has been adressed and should be solved in
the next version of Cellquest (v 3.1) that is supposed to be out very soon.
The problem that Joe refered to (data corruption at high transfer rates
when people would write directly to the MO disk), is also very likely to be
Cellquest 3.01f related, and I hope will be fixed in the next version.
Data-recovery:
--------------
Concerning Data recovery.In almost all of this cases I could recover the
data with Norton Utilities or Mac Tools or programs like this. For major
problemes (disk doesn't show up on the desktop etc) it is however important
that people don't try to fix problems if they don't know exactly what their
are doing, as you can overwrite data while trying to recover and then
things are gone forever...
ZIP reliability + HD crashes:
-----------------------------
I have however had several Syquest, ZIP's cartridges and hard-disks crash
the hard way (head scratches etc), with some of the data being
unrecoverably lost. Mainly because they fall on the floor, or it was just
bad luck....
CD-R Reliability:
-----------------
I have not had a single CD-R (out of > 40) that went bad after having
recorded and verified the data on it using ToastPro 3.02 on the Mac (Yamaha
CD 100 4x writer). However I think it's good to do double copies in case
people break their CD physically, or scratch it too badly. The data
integrity in CD-R are guaranteed 30 years.. compared to <5 years on any
magnetical media...
Voila, that's what I have to add as experience, I'm curious to hear about
the others..
Cheers, Matthias
_____________________________________________________________________________
Matthias Haury Flowcytometry Dept Immunology Institut Pasteur
mhaury@pasteur.fr Tel: 33 (01) 40 61 31 29 Fax: 33 (01) 45 68 86 39
_____________________________________________________________________________
At 10:16 +0100 14/03/97, gap@MIT.EDU wrote:
>Hi Everyone,
>
>Dennis' comment on the number of failures on MO made me wonder how much
>of a problem everyone is having. Dennis said 4 of 20 MOs failed in his
>hands. I use MO storage for a large number of users and have had 3 out
>of 45 fail. Could you relate your MO experiences back to me. Also, if
>you use zip disks how many failures have you had? If you have had
>failures were you able to recover your data from zip or MO disks. Do
>you double back up data? Do you use a utility that makes recovering
>data easier. Please relate only things you tried. I do not want to
>experiment with 10 different data backup or recovery programs. I will
>be glad to post my findings back to the flow group.
>
>Glenn Paradis
>MIT Flow Cytometry Core Facility
>E17-121A
>40 Ames Street
>Cambridge, MA 02139
>
>Voice: (617) 253-6454
>Fax: (617) 253-3714
>Email: gap@mit.edu
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CD-ROM Vol 3 was produced by Monica M. Shively and other staff at the
Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories and distributed free of charge
as an educational service to the cytometry community.
If you have any comments please direct them to
Dr. J. Paul Robinson, Professor & Director,
PUCL, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Phone: (765)-494-0757;
FAX(765) 494-0517;
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