Maxtor drive goes under

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwightk.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Jan 16 11:50:01 2003

>From: "Dennis Eldridge" <bones_at_northrock.bm>
>
>It's always fascinated me how people have such strong opinions of one
particular drive manufacturer over another. Commonly one will say that they
have a certain make of drive and it's never failed them and they've tried this
other one and they're dying left and right, etc. ad nauseum.
>
>I come at this issue from the perspective of a field service engineer and
subsequently independant consultant. The fact is that, particularly with IDE
drives, no matter the manufacturer, it's purely the luck of the draw whether one
is blessed with a good production run. I get the feeling that, to cut costs,

Hi
 I would say it is true in general that the luck of the draw is
the case but having worked for a computer manufacture, I can
tell you that at least one manufacture produced a line of drives
that were pure junk. Most of the drives would not last a 36 hour
running period ( well, not most but about 30% ). This is way
beyond luck of the draw.
 Being a system manufacture, we worked with the drive manufacture
on resolving the problem. It was never resolved to any useful
level. We finally switched manufactures but it cost us a lot.
 The fact is that there are lemons out there, by design. The
Segate 225's had a stiction problem that wasn't solved until
the end of that products line. The drive we were having problems
with were 2 and 4 gig drives. These had a servo information
corruption problem ( that by design would always fail over time ).
Dwight


 most manufacturers have the QC people working a couple of days a week, and even
then they're not exactly the best paid position in the sweatshop. The same goes
for cars - you just find the one you're psychologically comfortable with. No
bearing on statistical reality, but to the buyer that manufacturer's product
will always be superior, and faults will be more tolerable than those of the
manufacturer who's product is "in the doghouse" for whatever reason.
>
>As for Dell going the way of PacBell, etc., well I can only say we've got what
we asked for. We wanted cheap computing, we got cheap computing. If they
raised their standards and correspondingly their prices, we'd run like heck to
the next guy who offered their system for a couple of quid less. If you want a
rock-solid system with total manufacturer's support and guaranteed uptime and
all that jazz, you'd have to shell out over $50,000 plus support contracts, etc.
 Just like in the old days of some of the larger systems we discuss on this
forum. Just my $12.34 (Like everything else here in Bermuda, my opinion has to
be shipped here and customs duty paid <grin>).
>
>With apologies for the rant,
>
>Dennis (not Miller :-)
Received on Thu Jan 16 2003 - 11:50:01 GMT