can of worms

[Bozo]

Lately I've been doing a lot of RMAing of hard drives.
Given the following choices, which would you be buying

All IDE:

Seagate
Western Digital
Maxtor
Hitachi

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

Where's Samsung?

I'd pick Hitachi.

 

[mubs]

I've seen enough anecdotal evidence that says Hitachi sucks. Samsung's probably the best bet.

 

[sechs]

I'm on the Hitachi bandwagon.

Samsung would be my second choice.

 

[timwhit]

I have a couple Seagate drives that I have been very pleased with. I also have been buying Samsung drives for people that need advice. Haven't had any problems with either, yet.

 

[ddrueding]

d. Samsung

unless you need 10k RPM

 

[LunarMist]

d. Samsung

unless you need 10k RPM

Or unless you need capacity.

 

[Tea]

My choice in order. Doesn't really do the matter justice though, as amsung is a long way in front of the others. I'm also rather uncertain about the middle placings. Nos 1, 4 and 5 I'm pretty confident are correct, but I don't see thatany Hitachi or Maxtor drives.

1: Samsung
2: Hitachi
3: Maxtor
4: Seagate
5: Western Digital

 

[Tannin]

And I don't see that much proofreading. No elephant stamps for you today Tea.

 

[Mercutio]

160GB drives are a respectable capacity, Lunar. The Maxtor 200s are cheaper in $/GB but it's a close thing and the big Maxtors get HOT.

Honestly my disk collection has hit a wall at about 6TB because I can't bring myself to buy 250GB drives to replace 160s.

 

[Tea]

When are Samsung bringing out a bigger unit? It must be just about time for them to have a new model.

 

[Mercutio]

IIRC they announced a 200GB model some time ago. Haven't seen it.

Actually, Samsung's been REALLY smart about their selection of drives. I couldn't sell a 200GB drive to someone else if my life depended on it. The demand REALLY isn't there, no matter what I personally think.

The other guys have two years of 200GB+ drives on the market, but looking back I have to wonder how many of them they sold, and whether the R&D was even profitable.

 

[Tannin]

I agree, Mercutio. But the time is fast aproaching when 200 to 300 GB drives will start selling. Right now we are starting to sell almost as many 120GB units as 80GB, and the odd 160GB now and then. That suggests to me that we will start moving drives in the 200+ class quite soon now ... Let's say around Christmas time. By about April 05 they wil be in reasonably strong demand. That would probably be a very good time to have a new model ready. Better yet, a little sooner.

 

[Tannin]

Oh, and I forgot to mention what we do when asked for a 200GB drive for audio work. Rather than flirt with the uncertain reliability of a Seagate or a Western Digital, we tell the customer to buy two Samsung 120GB units. Most of them do just that.

Notice, by the way, what this says about my confidence in the Spinpoints: I'm more confident in a pair of Spinpoints than I am in a single WD — and this despite knowing perfectly well that paired drives (of any make or model) are (by simple mathematics) twice as likely to fail as a single drive (of the same make and model).

I wonder what the IBM drives are like now? Probably pretty good. Hitachi will have done some nice things with them, unless I miss my guess. But I'm staying with the proven winner. Someone else can experiment.

 

[Bozo]

The reason I only ask about those drives is that's what our "autorized vender" sells.
Isn't Hitachi IBM with a different name?

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[miksmi]

Isn't Hitachi IBM with a different name?

Yes, IBM sold its disk operation to Hitachi in June 2002. See articles: ISA, IBM.

 

[Buck]

So Bozo, which drives have you been RMAing a lot lately?

 

[Bozo]

I've RMA'd 3 WD drives in 5 days. All were manufactured Sept-Oct 2003. All were WD400JBs.
Not a good feeling when you have 100 or so installed.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Bozo]

And one Raptor that has been online 24/7 for about 6 months.

Good thing I just ordered more spares: unfortunally more WDs.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

An IT manage at one of the area's casinos came to my office to take some Cisco exams late last year.

We were talking about SANs, since I had a book on my desk on the subject, and he told me about *his* experience trying to use Raptors instead of SCSI drives in a cost-saving effort for his SAN.

I don't remember the exact number of drives he had in his arrays - 24 or 36 I think, but I do remember the RMA rate he told me: he averaged replacing one drive every four weeks.

This is more of that anecdotal evidence that there's something rotten in Lake Forest.

As far as Hitachi goes... I haven't had problems with them. I've pulled out a few bad 60GXPs, but that's ancient history. 180GXPs and 7k250s seem to be great drives. Remember that the 75GXP story actually got mainstream (CNN, WSJ) press. Having a black eye like that, I suspect they're pretty careful with current drive designs. We all know that some geeks will never forgive 'em.

 

[Bozo]

Just replaced another WD. Same model and build date.
One common denominator is the fact that we had a planned power outage Saturday.

Looks like I'll be buying Hitachi.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[blakerwry]

A new dell we purchased came with an Hitachi 40GB drive, looks to be a 7k250. The last 3 came with seagate 7200.7's

 

[mubs]

Have they stopped using Samsung, then? Some years ago they signed a $16B deal to use Samsung components in Dell machines (drives, RAM, etc.) Maybe the contract is up.

 

[blakerwry]

All 4 that I have looked at used Micron Technology branded pc2700 RAM. Looked exactly like RAM you'd buy from crucial. I don't remember seeing any crucial name on it though, just micron. I didn't look at the chips or PCB, but with a micron sticker I'd assume it was micron RAM.

 

[Buck]

OEMs use products from all of the top hard drive manufacturers. The one exception is Apple, qualifying with them is more tedious, so manufactures don't always make it in with them.

 

[blakerwry]

btw, all of our dells have come with RAM in a dual channel config and 865 chipsets...even our celeron. Pretty nice when they could have used 845 chipsets and/or single channel configs

 

[Bozo]

Most everything that goes into a production line PC is bought in bulk through the bid process. The PC manufacturer goes to each hard drive manufacturer and ask for a price for 10,000 40Gb, 7200RPM ( or whatever) hard drives. Lowest bid gets the contract.

It's all done by the almighty dollar: it has nothing to do with quality.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Buck]

Most everything that goes into a production line PC is bought in bulk through the bid process. The PC manufacturer goes to each hard drive manufacturer and ask for a price for 10,000 40Gb, 7200RPM ( or whatever) hard drives. Lowest bid gets the contract.

It's all done by the almighty dollar: it has nothing to do with quality.

Bozo :mrgrn:

Negative on that, I know first hand that OEMs (Dell, Gateway, HP, Apple etc.) have a quality process that must be met. They also have other requests that each HDD manufacturer try to meet.