TWO 40 MBYTE HARD DISCS

Reviewed by Lee Calcraft

Since we reviewed the Acorn and Watford 20Mbyte hard disc upgrades for the A310 a couple of months ago, a number of faster, larger capacity drives have become available for the Archimedes. In this review we will take a look at two of these units.

The drives selected for the review are a Toshiba 40Mbyte unit with an access time of 25 msecs, supplied by Technomatic, and a 35 msec Fujitsu drive of similar capacity marketed by GES Computer supplies. Both drives come with cables and full fitting instructions. For the purposes of the review, we used an Archimedes 410/1. These new machines have a built-in hard disc interface with a drive indicator LED already installed. Either drive is easily fitted inside the computer, and plugs directly into the sockets on the main board.

The drives would equally well suit an A310, however, providing a hard disc expansion card is fitted to the backplane. Both Watford and Acorn supply suitable cards for their drives.

Fitting the drives was a relatively easy matter. The outer casings of both have holes matching those on the disc drive fixing bar at the front of the computer, though you need to take care not to strip the thread from the small self-tapping screws (Acorn - please thread the fixing holes on the disc drive mounting bar!). In the case of the Fujitsu unit (but not of the Toshiba), one of the fixing flanges was offset so as to avoid having to share a fixing hole with the floppy drive.

A further small negative point about the Toshiba drive is that the mounting frame must be unscrewed in order to plug in the Arc's power supply feed to the drive. This is a little awkward, since it means that you have to screw it all back together again while it is connected to the relatively short power lead within the computer. But this is not really a problem, and both drives were easily installed.

Once your hard disc has been physically installed in the computer, you must tell the machine of its existence by typing:
*Configure HardDiscs 1
And of course, before use, the drives must be formatted (though GES will supply their drives formatted if you request it). To format a new drive, insert the RISC OS Support Disc (supplied with RISC OS upgrade kits and with the 400/1 series machines) into your floppy drive, and from the Desktop open up the Acorn directory, and run the file:
Hform

This goes through a dialogue process, and you can make use of the information supplied with either of the drives to answer the questions set. All hard discs will carry defective sectors, and with both the drives supplied, these were indicated on a sheet fixed to the body of the drive. When formatting the disc, you can either inform the formatter of the positions of the defects, as supplied, or you can use the "soak test" option (selectable from Hform). In the latter case, the formatter formats the drive, ignoring defects, and then perpetually checks the disc for read/write errors. GES suggest that you leave this running for 12 hours.

When you finally press the space bar to terminate the soak test, the formatter very quickly writes the map using the information gathered during the soak test; and the formatting process is complete. It then only remains for you to organise a sensible directory structure, and to transfer all your most-used files from floppy disc.

COMPARING THE TWO DRIVES

Both drives gave a similar speed performance on the tests carried out (see table 1). The timings for the standard 20Mbyte Acorn drive are given for comparison, and as you can see, the new drives are significantly faster.
TESTAcornTechnomaticGES
  ToshibaFujitsu
ScreenSave (80K)0.520.350.34
ScreenLoad (80K)0.330.250.24
*Save (80K)0.430.290.25
*Load (80K)0.340.230.21
PCW Store Benchmark1.430.820.71

One feature that I particularly like in the Toshiba unit is its auto-parking facility. As soon as the power is switched off, the heads park automatically, and there is no need to remember to issue the command *BYE before switching off.

As far as noise is concerned, the Fujitsu drive appears a little quieter than the Toshiba. The former generates about as much noise as the Arc's internal fan. Both units are built to a high standard, though the Fujitsu casing perhaps has a slight edge over its rival.

Both drives behaved very reliably over a period of several weeks' intensive use. And that leaves only the price. The Fujitsu drive is a little dearer than the Toshiba, and the auto-parking facility may further sway you in the direction of the latter. But if on the other hand you are keen on keeping noise levels as low as possible, then the Fujitsu may be for you.
ProductToshiba 40Mbyte Hard Disc
SupplierTechnomatic Ltd.
 Techno House,
 468 Church Lane,
 London, NW9 8TQ.
 Tel. 01 205 9558
Price£410.55 inc. carriage & VAT
ProductFujitsu 40Mbyte Hard Disc
SupplierGES Computer Supplies
 Granitehill Enterprise Centre,
 Granitehill Road,
 Northfield,
 Aberdeen, AB2 7AX.
 Tel. 0224 698545
Price£435.85 inc. carriage & VAT