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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!btnet!news.enterprise.net!starship From: apc@enterprise.net (Adrian Cooper) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Re: Micropolis Trouble Date: Thu, 14 Dec 95 22:28:46 GMT Organization: Enterprise PLC Lines: 52 Message-ID: <4aq8bf$s5n@news.enterprise.net> References: <4an54s$k9f@wolfe.wimsey.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: starship.enterprise.net X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 In article <4an54s$k9f@wolfe.wimsey.com>, mfraser@vanbc.wimsey.com (Mark Fraser) wrote: >Installed 7 Micropolis 2GB scsi drives in a new ISP server site. >All have now, after about 2-3 months, developed noisy to siezed >bearings. Micropolis have reacted by suspending their 24-hour >advance replacement program, and now want the failed units back >and estimate a 15 working day turnaround time. That translates >to 3 weeks or more. > >This has effectively disqualified them from any consideration for >future business, as the circumstances and policy have given us >no option but to purchase new drives from somewhere else, and to >undergo severe damage to service while we reconfigure the system. > >Has anyone else had this experience, and are there any suggestions as >to how one might provoke Micropolis to support us better? >/mark > Yes definitely! We also chose the very latest top of the range Micropolis (4.3Gb and 2.1GB SCSI) drives initially for our BSDI based servers, due mainly to the fact that over the years we have always found Micropolis to produce consistently very high quality, very high reliability drives - particularly for continuous use in a very demanding server type environments. Unfortunately however - ALL drives without exception(and there were many of them) failed within a month mostly with seized or collapsed bearings as in the experience of the poster of this article. We then obtained brand new replacement drives and within a couple of weeks they similarly failed as well. The fact that the customer services people were as willing to almost continually replace these drives ad-infinitum and without argument or explanation, is either a credit to Micropolis professionalism, or just resigned acceptance on their part of the fact that all drives shipped will be returned sooner rather than later, so why argue? This whole unfortunate saga cost us a great deal in lost time and very considerable inconvenience. We subsequently changed over completely to the equivalent Quantum drives, which have since proved to be excellent, and highly recommendable. I really do hope that Micropolis can sort out this apparently IMO catastrophic quality control problem, before their hitherto excellent name suffers permanently. As things stand now, I would have to take a considerable amount of convincing before risking Micropolis again. -- Adrian. ___________________________________ Adrian Cooper | apc@enterprise.net Enterprise PLC | http://www.enterprise.net Leading Internet Services in the British Isles.