On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 13:45:18 +0200 Rikard Johnels wrote:

And then again.. A friend of mine is a data recovery expert. The nickname of the IBM Deskstar is... Deathstar...

I was wondering if you could list some other brands that are good or bad. -- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

A

I was wondering if you could list some other brands that are good or bad. I like both western digital an seagate drivees. Been deploying seagate of late since I get a good price on them from synnex.

jack

Sune Kristensen wrote:

As far as I remember it was only the 75GXP and maybe the 60GXP that had the error, and got the nick "Deathstar".

Absolutely correct. 60GXP was more trouble than previous IBM drives, but 75GXP was even worse. My first 75GXP lasted about 2 months. Its exact replacement went well over a year. That was replaced under warranty with a Hitachi that is approaching a year old now (or is that two?).

The should be no problem with the 120GXP or the Hitachi models!

No more so than with anything else. I've had dismal experience with everything for the past 3-4 years: Quantum, Seagate, Maxtor, IBM, Hitachi. The only reason WD & Samsung are missing is I won't buy them. Fujitsu I've been too chicken to try. If you can, try to buy something with a manufacturer's warranty that is longer than the unacceptably short current one year standard. Longer warranties generally accompany better QC. Note most SCSI HD warranties remain 5 year. -- "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." Psalm 33:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

Hans du Plooy wrote:

On Thursday 02 September 2004 17:12, Felix Miata wrote:

...

No more so than with anything else. I've had dismal experience with everything for the past 3-4 years: Quantum, Seagate, Maxtor, IBM, Hitachi. The only reason WD & Samsung are missing is I won't buy them.

Maybe you should have you power supply or power source inspected? If all brands of hard drives fail on a constant basis, then there's obviously something wrong elsewhere.

Too many computers to count involved here, with who knows how many different brands of PS & motherboard. The problem is HD QC has been shaved too thin as data densities have approached the stratosphere, and I suspect motherboards aren't what they ought to be either. -- "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." Psalm 33:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 11:12:37AM -0400, Felix Miata wrote:

Sune Kristensen wrote:

...

As far as I remember it was only the 75GXP and maybe the 60GXP that had the error, and got the nick "Deathstar".

Absolutely correct. 60GXP was more trouble than previous IBM drives, but 75GXP was even worse. My first 75GXP lasted about 2 months. Its exact replacement went well over a year. That was replaced under warranty with a Hitachi that is approaching a year old now (or is that two?).

At the time, I heard that part of the problem was that IBM had realised that they had a quality problem on the drives, and had recalled them, but that a lot of dealers had realised that because of some clause in the IBM contract, they got a better deal selling the suspect stock to customers then dealing with the returns (getting a subsequent payment from IBM for doing this) than by sending the drives back to IBM in the first place. Of course, this could be rubbish. -- David Smith Work Email: Dave.Smith@st.com STMicroelectronics Home Email: David.Smith@ds-electronics.co.uk Bristol, England GPG Key: 0xF13192F2

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 16:28:48 -0500 Danny Sauer wrote:

After I replaced all 6 of the 75GXP drives that we had here, some twice, I decided that there would never be an IBM drive in my computer again. I'm presently using Seagate, as they join Fujitsu in my "I've never had a problem with them and I have several of them" list.

--Danny, expressing personal preference as if it's scientific fact :) Most of my drives have been Western Digital. I had a problem with a WD drive a while back, called WD and they sent me a replacement free of charge. I have had zero problems since.

-- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

I have Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital in my PC and I have have ALL fail from time to time. Fortunately I've had free warrantee replacement (I paid shipping to the respective facilities) from all vendors. I think they're about the same. When they run they are fine. When something breaks, well that's that. Babu --- Danny Sauer wrote:

Jerry wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] IBM hard drive' on Fri, Sep 03 at 06:47:

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On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 16:28:48 -0500 Danny Sauer wrote:

...

After I replaced all 6 of the 75GXP drives that we had here, some twice, I decided that there would never be an IBM drive in my computer again. I'm presently using Seagate, as they join Fujitsu in my "I've never had a problem with them and I have several of them" list.

--Danny, expressing personal preference as if it's scientific fact :)

...

Most of my drives have been Western Digital. I had a problem with a WD drive a while back, called WD and they sent me a replacement free of charge. I have had zero problems since.

I used to work at a large community college where I supported several hundred Gateway 2000 machines, both in labs and as instructor workstations. They all used WD drives. I replaced a hard drive about once every 2-3 weeks (not to mention the other crap hardware Gateway uses).

I will never own a Gateway 2K computer or another WD drive. Others may have different experience, but my unique background formed *my* unique opinion. :)

--Danny

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On Fri, 2004-09-03 at 16:18, Greg Freemyer wrote:

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...

I used to work at a large community college where I supported several hundred Gateway 2000 machines, both in labs and as instructor workstations. They all used WD drives. I replaced a hard drive about once every 2-3 weeks (not to mention the other crap hardware Gateway uses).

...

...

I will never own a Gateway 2K computer or another WD drive. Others may have different experience, but my unique background formed *my* unique opinion. :)

...

...

--Danny

I'm not hardware reliability expert, but with "several hundred" machines only one every 2-3 weeks sounds pretty reliable to me.

ie. MTBF = 5 years for a good disk drive = 5 * 52 wks = 260 wks (MTBF per drive)

You had "several hundred" machines, so the projected failure rate should have been closer to one per week.

Greg

While that sounds reasonable, the fact remains that after you replace the WD drive with another brand. The overall HD failure rate decreases? Like Danny, my staff maintains about 400 computers. Last year we purchased 200 Dell Optiplex GX270's - 25 units at a time. Over the course of the year they came with either a WD, Hitachi, Maxtor or Seagate drive. All of those machines were deployed by the end of September so have been in use for a minimum of 1 year. Every time we have had a HD failure in one of those machines it has been either a WD or Hitachi drive. We replace the failed drive with a Seagate drive. When we return the failed drive to Dell for warranty replacement we always get back the same brand that failed. Which we only use in machines that are used for testing or in non-critical utility machines that have a static configuration and recovery of the machine involves simply replacing the failed HD and restoring an image of the configuration and rebooting.

Greg wrote regarding 're[2]: [SLE] IBM hard drive' on Fri, Sep 03 at 17:02:

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...

I used to work at a large community college where I supported several hundred Gateway 2000 machines, both in labs and as instructor workstations. They all used WD drives. I replaced a hard drive about once every 2-3 weeks (not to mention the other crap hardware Gateway uses).

...

...

I will never own a Gateway 2K computer or another WD drive. Others may have different experience, but my unique background formed *my* unique opinion. :)

...

...

--Danny

I'm not hardware reliability expert, but with "several hundred" machines only one every 2-3 weeks sounds pretty reliable to me.

ie. MTBF = 5 years for a good disk drive = 5 * 52 wks = 260 wks (MTBF per drive)

You had "several hundred" machines, so the projected failure rate should have been closer to one per week.

MTBF = *Mean* Time Between Failures. The Mean is also known as the Average. While it's reasonable to assume that half of the drives will be dead before that 5 years and half after, it's not reasonable to assume that they'll die at constant intervals, one per interval right up to the point where they're all dead. I'll grant that, as the time in operation approaches the MTBF, the odds go up that a drive will fail. Since each drive's failure is independant of each other drive's failure, though, you can not make any accurate predictions on the group as a whole. You can only predict the odds that "a" drive will fail within a given time. The odds that "a" drive will fail within a week or so are pretty slim if quality control is good, because the drives will be pretty consistent. Consistency tends to pull the distribution in towards the mean. If we had a graph of this 5 year MTBF drive, most of the drives *should* fail somewhere close to the 5 year mark. Given that we had lots of drives failing at a pretty constant rate, and that the constant rate was well before a reasonable MTBF, then one of two things can be inferred. Either 1) WD Quality control is bad, 2) we got most of the drives on the bottom side of the MTBF graph (note that just as many would have to exceed the MTBF in order to pull the mean up), or 3) the MTBF for WD drives is lower than I think it should be. None of those cases are good excuses, IMHO, and therefore I don't use WD anymore - faulty probability calculations or not. --Danny

Damon wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] IBM hard drive' on Tue, Sep 07 at 14:50:

Danny Sauer wrote:

...

I used to work at a large community college where I supported several hundred Gateway 2000 machines, both in labs and as instructor workstations. They all used WD drives. I replaced a hard drive about once every 2-3 weeks (not to mention the other crap hardware Gateway uses). What year was that? I am curious because of my own experience with WD a few years ago. At the beginning of 1998 my wife and I went to Peru while

This was in the late 90's, ending in early 2000. Also, before WD reduced the length of their warrantys (like the other HD manufacturers). --Danny, whose cat leaves the computer alone :)

Rikard Johnels wrote:

On Thursday 02 September 2004 09.58, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Wednesday 01 September 2004 09:14 pm, marcia wrote:

...

Dear All,

Does anyone know if an IBM/HITACHI 120 GB 7200 RPM ATA100 120GXP hard drive would be compatible with Suse 8.2 pro on my Athlon xp 1600+? I have an IBM deskstar that is 60 gigs and I have almost filled it up. I want to add another hard drive as a slave since I have the slot for it. Any advice or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I want my new one to be happy with my IBM deskstar and to have at least 120 GB.

Thanks for any help.

Sincerely,

Marcia* *

IMHO the Deskstars are some of the best drives I've ever seen.

I see no reason why a 120 would not work in a machine of that vintage. Slap it in and see what yast can do with it. If you put it in as a slave on the same controller it should show up as hdb.

Just make sure you don't get a SATA model drive.

And then again.. A friend of mine is a data recovery expert. The nickname of the IBM Deskstar is... Deathstar, as it has the tendency of just dying on you wo. prior warning. He recommended me to exchange mine for something other then the Deskstar. And i myself had the "fun" job to do to recover a friends 120G drive of that exact brand.

So i look for other drives than the IBM Deskstar as i go for new ones.

Now i KONW this probably gonna start a flamewar over "I have one and it has worked for years", and that is probably all fine and nice. Two things on it tho.. 1. I just gave my 2 cents worth of experience of the drive and 2. Keep the probably upcoming OT flamewar off the list.

With kind regards

I have a number of DEATHSTARS I need to dispose of as waste. I recently bought a 120G one on the assurance of the guy in the shop that Hitachi has solved the IBM problem. I was desparate when I bought the last one as my experience just after Hitachi took them over was not a good one, I emailed my problem as directed on their website, hoping to have it replaced under warranty, I never got a reply. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer =====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====

On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 06:45, Rikard Johnels wrote:

On Thursday 02 September 2004 09.58, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Wednesday 01 September 2004 09:14 pm, marcia wrote:

...

Dear All,

Does anyone know if an IBM/HITACHI 120 GB 7200 RPM ATA100 120GXP hard drive would be compatible with Suse 8.2 pro on my Athlon xp 1600+? I have an IBM deskstar that is 60 gigs and I have almost filled it up. I want to add another hard drive as a slave since I have the slot for it. Any advice or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I want my new one to be happy with my IBM deskstar and to have at least 120 GB.

Thanks for any help.

Sincerely,

Marcia* *

IMHO the Deskstars are some of the best drives I've ever seen.

I see no reason why a 120 would not work in a machine of that vintage. Slap it in and see what yast can do with it. If you put it in as a slave on the same controller it should show up as hdb.

Just make sure you don't get a SATA model drive.

And then again.. A friend of mine is a data recovery expert. The nickname of the IBM Deskstar is... Deathstar, as it has the tendency of just dying on you wo. prior warning. He recommended me to exchange mine for something other then the Deskstar. And i myself had the "fun" job to do to recover a friends 120G drive of that exact brand.

So i look for other drives than the IBM Deskstar as i go for new ones.

Now i KONW this probably gonna start a flamewar over "I have one and it has worked for years", and that is probably all fine and nice. Two things on it tho.. 1. I just gave my 2 cents worth of experience of the drive and 2. Keep the probably upcoming OT flamewar off the list.

I can't comment on IBM/Hitachi desktop drives, have been too afraid to try them as we have had more than a dozen of their laptop drives fail in the last year all of which were less than a year old, some failed on laptops that were only two months old. Most of them failed without any warning at all. I have been replacing them with Toshiba drives and so far everything has been good and they are much quieter. As for desktop/server drives stay far far away from anything Western Digital. For IDE/SATA I use Seagate or Maxtor. For SCSI, I use Seagate or Fujitsu. -- Chuck Stuettgen http://www.cfs-tech.homelinux.net

Hans du Plooy wrote:

On Thursday 02 September 2004 13:45, Rikard Johnels wrote:

...

And then again.. A friend of mine is a data recovery expert. The nickname of the IBM Deskstar is... Deathstar, as it has the tendency of

Well, lots of people have lots of derogatory terms for various things. There are people who swear by Fujitsu drives, while I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.

Different strokes...

People who work for or have worked for Fujitsu won't touch their drives with a barge pole either, even the 5 1/4 inch floppy drives used to cause problems. We could never make anything that spins. Whatever we made, we ended up doing wholesale swap outs, just to improve reliability, but we never achieved an acceptible level of reliability. The last disk subsystems we made, we couldn't even give them away. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer =====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====