The really sad not-so-secret is that _all_ parts can fail, no matter the manufacturer. All the bits and bobs and sub-systems built from them have MTTF times and can randomly fail at any time. Some manufacturers take care to design with this in mind by over-spec'ing, designing failure-prone parts out, or by paying more for longer MTTF parts. Some just include a 3 year warranty and hope that most failures will be weeded out during burn-in or as infant mortality and early returns.
If you don't mind paying extra, get so-called server-grade drives. Be very wary of parts designed to be sold in the mobile market as they aren't rated for always-on. I've been nailed by using 2.5" drives that were meant for laptops in small server appliances. They run fine for about a year then the spindle motor fails or bearings seize, or the head actuator quits. That's also a strong argument against using a notebook as a desktop replacement. I killed the drive in one laptop by doing an 8-hour video file render. Chugged continuously until about 4:00 AM then just died. On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:37 PM, P. J. Alling <[email protected]> wrote: > Don't feel safe, I've had everything from IBM to Western Digital to Sony to > Sanyo to Seagate drives fail. The sad secret is that most if not all > manufactures don't make all the available sizes of drives, so they buy > something to fill the gap in their lines from another manufacture install > their own firmware, rebadge and package as it were their own. > > > On 2/4/2013 4:54 PM, John Sessoms wrote: >> >> From: "Larry Colen" >> >>> An apple centric friend of mine suggested either Apple or Intel SSDs, and >>> nothing else. I didn't get all of the details of why, but mostly it has >>> to do with which manufacturers test for what. >>> >> >> Any SATA II drive should be compatible. For whatever it might be worth, >> your existing 320GB hard-drive is by Western Digital. >> >> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136098 >> >> The only hard-drives I've ever had fail in use were Western Digital. >> >>> There's another possible route that has been suggested and that's to find >>> a used Mac Pro (desktop). A friend pointed me to a craigslist add for an >>> 8 core machine for $1200. Not as cheap as an SSD, but then I could put >>> all of my drives in the box so that they are right on the SATA bus rather >>> than hanging them off firewire or such like. >> >> > > > -- > Buy a Leica to get the full “Leica Experience”, (a quick reduction of funds > in the bank account). > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
