Running Interactive UNIX w/2 80 MB HDs instead of 1 160. Acceptable?

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <1991Feb28.171847.2803 at lynx.CS.ORST.EDU> holtt at jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Tim Holt) writes:
| I'm setting up an Everex 386/25 Step system to run Interactive's UNIX, and
| am wondering how acceptable it would be to use 2 80 MB HDs instead of one
| large one (like a 160).  I suppose there could be some degredation, but
| I can also imagine some improvement in performance, especially if the
| swap space was on one HD and work space on the other.

  The first answer is yes, you can do two 80's and performance should be
somewhat better than one 160 (assuming similar seek times).

  However, running on a ship is going to present lots of motion (roll) and
vibration which are hard on a disk. Under those conditions an IDE drive
(or other 3-1/2 inch) may be better in terms of reliability. I know the
Navy has some data on this, and they recently got a bunch of portables
for on ship use on at least a few ships. Having seen them used in
running 4x4's during an off road rally, I guess they are as good as you
will get.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me