[rescue] Re: Drive Reliability (was SCSI drive for sale at buy.com)

[Robert Novak]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 11:44:12AM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 10:53:03AM -0400, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
> 
> > As I understand it Micropolis really made a lot of crap in the end of
> > their existence.  The newest Micropolis drive I have is a Tomohawk, and
> > I don't use it often... it does work OK though.  The 5.25" full height
> > 9 gig drive (1991) I have been told is a doorstop waighting to happen
> > (the one I have already is a doorstop :-) ).
> 
> At one shop where I worked we used to make bets on when a Micropolis
> drive died.  None made it past 2 weeks.

Heh. We had interesting experiences with some of their 9gb FH WSCSI
disks at my networking company. Disk Drive Depot (now Dotcom Depot,
but they're still in business) sold the first one to "us" almost a
year before I arrived at the company. One year warranty. Died beginning
of the last week of the warranty. 

Took boss's purchasing card in, got it replaced and got a second one
for half the price a year earlier ($1600 and $800 I think).

First one's replacement was retired when we changed servers. Second 
one died... one week before end of warranty. 

I figured Corpsys got a bad batch that actually died before the 
warranty was up :) Although they've been good about these things...
when my 80gb cheapo ($75 a year ago) IDE refurb started the click
of death in my g3, I took it in with receipt, they looked at it
to make sure it was one of theirs, pulled another out of the 
cabinet, and sent me on my way. No forms or hassles. I like that.
And most of the stuff I've gotten from them is still working years
later. 

> > I have had pretty good luck with Fujitsu as well, and have found their
> > warranty replacement program even replaces OEM drives (at least the one
> > or two I warranteed).... which the other vendors immediately know the drive
> > as OEM and say "NO".
> 
> I just got some Fujis after people assured me they are good.  Lot's of
> them, brand new, cheap on ebay.  Some of them are set up for raid
> so you have to take them out of their raid sleds, but that's not a big
> deal.

Fuji != Fujitsu :) If you're abbreviating to the name of a different
company, that's bad, mmmkay?

I've got some Fujitsu drives around here, and I've used hundreds of
Hitachis (worked for a company that bought the 73gb disks by the pallet). 
On the Hitachis, we had good luck when they were well mounted. A 
vendor's proprietary mounting bracket caused us to lose 3 drives 
a week for one month before we sent it back.

The IBM SCSI ones I've gone through have been pretty good, and warranty 
service is good too. Just got a Seagate Elite enclosure though, 2 23gb
disks for $40, so I'm gonna cable that critter up next.

--Rob
-- 
Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
	"I don't want to doubt you, Know everything about you
      I don't want to sit Across the table from you Wishing I could run."