[GRLUG] At long last...

[Bob Kline]

One problem is that as an individual
it's hard to get a sense of the quality
of a drive unless you read about it.
For one single drive, if it fails you just
conclude you were unlucky.

But I remember years ago getting in
a box of drives at work.  Maybe 20.
And was astounded at how fast they
died.  Maybe half after one year.

In general, it's hard to get a look at
the bigger picture.  Of 10,000 drives,
what fraction dies after the first year?
The place selling them probably has
a good idea, but I suspect that data
is held close to the vest.  No reason
to give the consumer a tip off that the
particular model of drive is junk - they'll
want their money back.  On a one-by-one
basis you can play games.

Fortunately, drives are cheap today,
and the quality does seem to be
increasing on the whole.

   -- Bob


On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Ben DeMott <ben.demott at gmail.com> wrote:

> When I worked in the bowels of a corporate office and did IT work...
> It was just about guaranteed that the hard drives in the Dell Mini-Towers
> would fail every 1.5 - 2 years consistently.
> I would say about 50% of them did.
>
> Not one replaced drive - (retail purchased) off the shelf ever failed in my
> time...(except for server 15k rpm drives) -> they failed fairly regularly.
>
> When I was a young lad, I worked for Geek Squad for awhile... and I noticed
> that If you inspect OEM drives vs Retail drives you will find that they
> actually have different Manufacturer origins for most of the HDD Suppliers.
> We had to dispose of bad customer drives or give them back... so I've
> physically taken apart probably 200 drives...  The size or fitness of the
> parts doesn't appear to be different on similar models of similar sizes but
> they were usually manufactured in a different plant... In fact with Western
> Digital this is how you determine warranty fitness.  The serial number (used
> to) inform you of the Plant the drive was manufactured in. If the serial
> number had an 03, 04, 05 in it.. it meant it was OEM -> In the key to the
> serial number these same digits referenced "MFG Origin"
> I'm convinced the drives made for OEM Computer manufacturers are somehow
> more cheaply built as a whole than drives that come off the retail shelf for
> consumers.
>
> Just my conspiratorial thoughts on the topic...
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 4:03 PM, John J. Foerch <jjfoerch at earthlink.net>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 03:43:52PM -0500, Bob Kline wrote:
>> > What's your favorite drive manufacturer?
>> >
>> > These things float around.  Right now I
>> > prefer WD.
>> >
>> >     -- Bob
>>
>>
>> WD all the way.
>>
>> --
>> John Foerch
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