@4Quantum Trailblazer 3.5"  1Gig Hard-Drive:-
@7
This month we received several hard-drives, 2 to be exact, the first

was a Seagate 2.5" drive, the latter was a Quantum Trailblazer.

Tut, there's no fooling you clever A.F readers is there?

We didn't really receive two drives, well... what I mean is, we have

2 drives, but we didn't receive them. Are you with me?

Thought not.

Anyway, we do have two hard-drives, the first is a 130Meg Seagate (2.5")

the other is a Gigabyte 3.5" Quantum Trailblazer. The drive I'll review

this month is the Quantum Trailblazer, for all you power hungry maniacs,

err, like me. (the Seagate will be reviewed next month)

 We fitted our Quantum into an A1200, although the instructions say
                                                            #6More>>>@7
that it is possible to fit it into an A600 as well, but looking at the

size of the drive and the fact that it only just fitted into our A1200

I wouldn't fancy the job of fitting it into an A600.

Moooooviiiiing Swiiiiiffftlyyy oooOONN...

The drive seems to be made of err, cheap stuff, I mean the metal plate

at the top is very weak and it feels as if you're going to crush the

drive if you grip it too hard, but apart from this, it's alright I s'ppose.

Fitting the drive isn't much of a problem, it's just a case of plugging

the drive into the disk drive slot, (inside the A1200) then plugging the

disk drive into the adaptor on hard-disks plug. You then have to connect

the hard-drive to the activity lights connector, located just above

the disk-drive, you all know where!                         #4More>>>@7

Now, the awkward part, finding somewhere to fit the bluddy bugger in.

I had to strip out part of the shield on my A1200's inards, which was err,

a very taxing job, one which almost caused me to faint.

Argghh! My precious Amiga is being torn apart!

Once you have made a place to put the drive, you just connect the 

3.5"-2.5" IDE cable to both the drive and the male connector in the A1200.

Now the hard part, closing your Amiga back up. Enjoy.

Once fitted, the drive worked pretty well, it's exceptionally fast, 

especially with my 030 pushing it a bit. 

 The drive is also very much quieter than my old one, my old drive

also, ran at about 850K/s, according to sys-info, yes I know it's a bit 

slow! The Quantum clocked up over 2Mb per second.              #5More>>>@7

Anyway, the drive is fast and the speed it formatted the 3 partitions

was amazing, compared to my old drive!

One little quirk though, being the impatient person I am, I accidentally

resetted the computer while the 3rd partition was being written to.

You can guess the rest! Disk Salve didn't work, so I had to re-format

the partition. The same thing happened a few weeks ago, normally a drive

would validate itself again, like my old one, but this one didn't.

I don't mean to say it never re-validates itself, it's just that with my

old drive I used to be able to de-validate the drive up to about 5 or 6

times before it went kaput, this drive either de-validates beyond repair

or you get only get once chance of a cock-up. This has led me to be

VERY careful, not to mention patient.                           #3More>>>@7

I could of course buy the Ami-File safe thingy, which I probably will in

a few weeks, but until then....

Anyway, the drive is massive, it's fast, it's quiet and it's mine

ALL MINE..... HAH HAH HAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! MIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNEEEEEE!

By the way, how's your 80Meg drive Mark? 


See you next month with a review of the Seagate 130. 

(which is quite cheap now, worth buying if you can't afford this one and 

haven't already got a H.D).