Have you used any IBM drives made in the past year? Until about a year ago IBM drives were renowned for their reliability, and I used to recommend IBM to all my friends. Since then, they have suffered reliability problems, and the return rate for IBM drives has been high. There was even a class-action lawsuit launched against IBM last year, since so many people's drives failed (I think this was settled out of court).
IBM have been first to develop and implement all sorts of new technologies, including glass platters and that 'pixie dust' stuff. It looks as if they're having major teething problems with these new technologies. There was some controversy a few weeks ago when IBM placed warnings on their new drives indicating that they shouldn't be used for more than eight hours per day. If that isn't an indication of poor reliability, then I don't know what is. With all these quality control problems, and IBM's recent financial woes, I am not surprised that they have decided to sell their hard drive unit to Hitachi. If you're wondering where I get all this stuff, it is The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk). For me, IBM was a natural choice until this string of incidents. WD is out of the picture, since they don't correctly follow the ATA spec. That leaves Seagate and Maxtor. On 19 May 2002 00:25:02 -0400, Lyvim Xaphir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, 2002-05-18 at 22:11, KevinO wrote: > > IBM > > I heartily second this. I set up a web company on IBM's over three > years ago, and they've been running 24/7 ever since. Last week the > technical director told me it was one of the best things I ever did; > he's sold on the hardware. > > First time I've heard about the Hitachi thing, tho... > > > I just bought 4 more from : http://www.mwave.com > > > > I currently have at least a dozen modern IBM HDs spinning 24x7 here. > > > > I've never had a problem with any of them. They're real fast with or without > > > > raid. hdparm reported >35MB/s throughput with Mandrake 8.2, 40 GB IBM > > 7200RPM, stock kernel and no hdparm settings. This was with a Tyan 2460 and > > dual Athlon MP1600+. > > > > I have had seagate, maxtor, and western digital drives fail. :-( > > Again....same experience here. Not only me, but I think that site > Walnut creek ended up ripping out a bunch of barracudas some years back; > all brand new, because of the failures. I can't remember what they did, > but it wasn't seagate. > > In any case, it's hard to beat IBM's MTBF. YMMV, of course; but my > personal experience is the same as Kevin O'Connor's. > > LX > > > > > > Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > > > I've been looking at the hard drive scene over the last few months in > > > preparation for purchasing a new system. I've got most of the hardware > > > details sorted out, but there is one area that I'm not quite settled on: > > > hard drives. I am basically looking for an affordable 80GB IDE drive that > > > can deliver fast and reliable (i.e. able to run 24x7) performance. I want > > > to buy two of them so I can make a RAID0 out of them. > > > > > > Of course, they need to play well with Linux, and with any other > > > 'alternate' OS/kernel I throw at it. From what I have read, that rules out > > > Western Digital. Since I prize reliability, that would rule out IBM (IBM > > > is offloading their hard drive business to Hitachi, so that's another > > > minus for them). So the way I see it, only Seagate and Maxtor are still in > > > the race. I checked out storagereview.com and the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus > > > D740X (AKA 'Viper') 80GB appears to be neck-and-neck with the Seagate > > > Barracuda ATA IV 80GB. > > > > > > Any thoughts, people? Thx. -- Sridhar Dhanapalan We are Microsoft of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is- Fatal Exception Error in MSBORG32.DLL
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