A fair point, but one that needs qualified a little bit: The EB/BB models have obvious part-level differences as compared to a JB. There may very well be (and likely are) differences in quality between different product models. The first point of my argument (and I should have clarified this) is that for a given model, there is no difference in reliability or quality between a drive sold with a 1 year warranty vs. one sold with a 3 or 5 year warranty. A good example is WD: internal retail packaged drives, regardless of model*, carry a one-year warranty, where the OEM models carry a three-year warranty.
And just for clarification...as of July 2005, WD's OEM BB drives carry a 3 year warranty, same as JB, JD, KS, AAxx, etc. Thane, you also mentioned that most of the failures you see are in big-vendor boxes...is it possible that those machines outfitted with WD's JB series drives are also mounted better, or ventilated better, or are fitted with a better PSU? I don't know one way or another, just suggesting the possibility that there could be additional variables at play here. * Caviar product line only. Enterprise-marketed drives, such as the Raptor and RE-series, carry a universal 5 year warranty. Greg > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:hardware- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thane Sherrington > Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 11:48 AM > To: The Hardware List > Subject: RE: [H] Seagate drive died > > At 12:30 PM 13/05/2007, Greg Sevart wrote: > > >In short: A drive with a 1-year warranty is no more or less reliable > than a > >drive with a 5-year warranty. > > While your argument seems sound, it doesn't appear to agree with real > world testing. I have seen EB and BB drives fail by a factor of at > least a factor of 5 over JB drives. The EB/BB line are WD's one year > warranty drives (with 2MB cache) while the JBs are the 3 year > warranty drives (with 8MB cache.) So there is clearly a difference > in quality, as my experience is based over several years with > hundreds of drives. > > T
