HDD manufacturers wimp out: 1 year warranty

[bigben2k]

Here's a clip from a UK supplier:

"Important Notice: We have been informed by IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital and Fujitsu that all IDE based Hard Disk Drives will revert back to a 1 Year Warranty from October 1st 2002. All SCSI Hard Drives from the above manufacturers will retain their standard 3-5 year manufacturers warranty."

To me, this leaves the door wide open for a sleuth of sub-standard HDDs to appear on the market, along with lax quality control from all the manufacturers. It's going to translate into a price war, which is going to cause the manufacturers to cut costs, by designing HDDs specifically made to last no longer than one year. It's a bad idea, no matter what angle I look at it...

Geesh! Am I going to have to go SCSI now?

[mo]

Perhaps this is an attempt to free up resources to focus on the new generation of HDD using Serial ATA? Im hoping Serial ATA disks will have 3-5 years warranty as well, ESPECIALLY that some people will not just jump at the fact that they are the newest/latest greatest and want to make sure they are up to par.

I remember the first sleuth of 5500 rpm disks had MAJOR problems.

[gmat]

It seems it's the new trend amongst HD manufacturers.
* All ATA (and serial ATA..) disks are down to 1y warranty
* SCSI / FC disks are left to 3 to 5y

IBM opened the fire, and caught a nasty backfire from the user community. But now Seagate, Maxtor and others are following...

For more coverage, and specialized forums about these matters: http://www.storagereview.com (i'm not affiliated in any way... it's just the best site around when talking about HDs)

Personally i couldnt care less, i've been all SCSI for a long time... And it will not change before another long time...

[bigben2k]

Thanks for the link gmat (I reposted my msg).

Ok, so what they're actually doing, is creating 2 tiers of HDDs:
1-the cheapos
2-the quality units

I can see that.

[bigben2k]

Oh, that's brilliant...

Maxtor's Maxline line of HDDs, the 2nd class of HDDs, with a 3 yr warranty, will come in either 200GB, 250GB or 320GB, and the suggested MSRP starts at $300.00!!!

That's it, I'm going SCSI.

[jtroutma]

BigBen:

You should have gone SCSI from the beginning like Gmat and myself

I cant speak for Gmat but I am one VERY satisfied customer in the SCSI department..... just wish they wernt so darn expensive. BUT they DO last forever!

[bigben2k]

Well thank you jtroutma... I can see now that SCSI was the way to go, now I have an excuse!

[jtroutma]

One other thing I can vouch for in my decision to use SCSI...... higher FSB settings dont seem to affect SCSI systems very much at all. I have had my Adaptec 2940U2W card all the way up to 42Mhz bus and have never given me any problems, even with 5 HDDS, 3 CDROMs, and a Zip 100 onboard

[bigben2k]

Yikes! Are you really running 8 drives off of that card?

I always liked the Adaptec 2940s, ever since they came out. That's what I'll be looking at, again.

I'm considering a raid array though. 0+1 probably.

[jtroutma]

Yep, and I am only at 1/2 capacity of it

(1) Quantum Atlas V 7200RPM 6.3ms 9.1Gb
(4) Quantum Atlas IV 7200RPM 6.9ms 9.1Gb
(1) Pionneer 6X DVD Drive
(1) Toshiba 32X CDROM Drive
(1) Yamaha 16x12x40x CD-RW Drive
(1) Iomega Zip100

= 8 SCSI devices on 1 controller

I LOVE SCSI! 15 devices for 1 IRQ & 1 Memory Address; that's it!

Oh and dont forget....EXCELLENT performace and reduced CPU overhead. Only drawback is price....

As for RAID arrays, I am currently in the middle of testing my Adaptec AAA-131U2 RAID card again. It is noticeably slower in hardware RAID than with my AHA-2940U2W in software mode. Been trying to answer the question "Why is a software solution faster than a hardware solution?" for quite some time.

Also just found out that you can do software RAID 5 with Win2K server so that is always an option. HEHE just install Win2K Pro and use NTSWITCH to get RAID 5

[g.l.amour]

pff, thought alot about going to scsi, but have always held against it that they make the inside of a pc a total mess. the cables are way too wide., when we are talking serial scsi, i might consider, with the slick thin cables.

in the mean time, i hate the hd manufacturors for the fact that they are making the hdd's a consumer product like say a cdrw. a cdrw could last a year if you're lucky. if your drives are so failure prone, than u could as well skip the whole warranty process.

i work at a pc repair center that cooperates with a warehouse chain, that sells about 15k pc's of same config 2 x a year. they have always had seagate barracuda's(5400's). i like em for being so quiet. since a year they are using the 80GB type. man those are coming back like its a party at our helpdesk. our customers have sort of grown used to finding all their data gone one day. and that day could be even a month or a couple of weeks after purchase. they are falling like flies. those customers are the sort that don't have 3-4 hd's on their system, to make backups all the time. don't understand me wrong, its not as if every drive has already been replaced. only that from 30k pc's sold last year, about 3 - 8 hdd's a day break down. and thats alot more than we used to see. that means that over 2 yrs there are optimistically +/- 3 - 4% of all their hard drives that break down over warranty period (we offer 2 yrs warranty). i can understand that that costs them huge money, as a manufacturar normally strives to keep their failure rate way under 1% (+/-0.2%

[mo]

SCSI is great.. I run my OS on a 36 gig Quantum Atlas 10k for my operating system, but for storage and divx movies and mp3s and everything else Im still using ID. at $300 for 200+ gig harddisk starting price (brand new item which will probably get cheaper as newer and bigger and faster disks come out) it is still a great deal where extreme performance is really just a luxury.

None of my 4 IDE Disks have gone bad, 3 years and over 2000 movies later

[gmat]

Jroutma is right, i'm 100% satisfied with my SCSI config.
A bit of background. I've owned HDDs since 1989, when 4MB was "huge". Back then SCSI was the only way (i had an Amiga). Then came the PC and IDE drives. The first thing i noticed was, IDE drives were *slower* than my previous SCSI drives... not good. So i eventually came back to SCSI by the means of an Adaptec 2940 (had to earn some money for it, so it took some time...).
Now i've got the 29160, Ultra SCSI plextor units, Ultra160 HDDs - and i'm waiting for the Seagate Cheetah 15K.3, the fastest drive in existence...
In the meantime i'm still on IDE drives at work. I can *feel* the difference. The OS is less snappy, i'd say "sluggish", drive accesses lock up the machine, and HDD units die like flies on a window in summer.
Each time i get back home (set aside the watercooled experience) it's like i'm "back to the future" Quick OS loading times, instant program launching, pain-free *swap file accesses* (!! the most noticeable !!)... In those games where data is fed more or less continuously from the HD, no hang-up...
Add to this, the mechanically superior units (=longer life times), easy setup in OS (nothing to do...), no chipset / driver problems (ive got the infamous KT133) since only the Adaptec has to be known by the OS - and Adaptec drivers are standard in every OS.
Besides one can find rounded SCSI cables - at a price though.

So may i get back to ATA or even Serial ATA ? I dont think so, and the current trend from manufacturers confirms this choice...


(edit)
BB2K, if you got the U160 way, forget the RAID. Unless you *really* need the mirroring security (ie you're running an enterprise-class server) it's a waste of money, heat, and case room. The latest 10K units (Cheetah 10K.6, Atlas 10K.4, Fujistsu MAM) or 15K units (Cheetah 15K.3, upcoming Atlas, Fujitsu MAN) are so blazing fast that you dont need the added speed of RAID striping.
If it's for your personal PC, stick to a single A29320 (since the 160 is gone...) and 1 or 2 good HDD unit(s). I'd say, a small 15K for the OS and critical programs (=games), and a big 10K for data storage and other programs.
(/edit)

[DarkEdge]

Well SCSI is cool but I would like to see how serial ata turns out. I don't think the first run will be that impressive but i'm looking forward to the second revision.

If I had the money however I wouldn't be waiting on SCSI. I have almost 320gb of storage space I use. I couldn't afford to eat if that was all SCSI. I could run a 10gig drive for the os and a couple of games but thats not worth it to myself.

[bigben2k]

I started to look into all this yesterday.

First off, IDE will give max 133 transfer rate, while SATA tops out at 150 right now.

SCSI can do 160, with an Adaptec 29160, or a cheaper 19160. There are also 320 drives, but they're mostly server units.

This stuff is still expensive, and I don't have an economical RAID 0/1 solution...

Gonna have to re-think this again...

[g.l.amour]

how about scsi noise? i now have a 5400rpm seagate baracuda. since i don't know anything faster (it is faster than alot of 7200rpm's), it is ok for what i use it for.it is about the most silent drive i ever used. problem is that with the watercooling and silent psu, the ide hdd is the noisiest component at the moment. so installing scsi will prolly get my case temps up; and the sheer rpm increase leads me to believe that the noise will go up with the same percentage.

[bigben2k]

Noise is one issue, temps are another.

I'm sure that even at 10'000 rpm (common for SCSI), it's not that loud. The newest drives out there are pretty quiet. If need be, I could rubber mount them: you'd be surprised how little noise you get when you isolate a component.

As for heat, I could use a waterblock, or the drive cages that come with my Chieftech DA-01 to vent them, so I'm not concerned about that either.

[nuclear]

gmat

I think I can add a little something about IDE.
I am currently running a little 20g quantum fireball as my os hd. I also have a raid 0 of 2 quantum fireball 20g as my game disk. So gaem that do constant access and things like these are running perfectly fine, and since it's not on the os hd, i can do multiple things on the raid array without reducing the perofrmance of my os.
But I also have an older scsi hardware raid array of 3 really old seagate 9.1g (full height) and even if the disk are slower then my ide array, i can send it 2 or 3 copy and the ssame time, without any slow down. Scsi has it's benefit, but it's costy, and using multiple fast IDE drive ofset this benefit but using a 15k drive, i might change my vision of things (i do have the u160 raid controller in the form of a 39160 on board of my tk7). So until then, i will still run IDE :P


Myself, I will build a raid-0 array of 2 baracuda 5 serial ata 80g 8megs(as soon as they arrive on the market and seagate set their waranty at 3 years as stated on the spec sheet) for data and games, and move my os on the raid-0 on the little promise.

[gmat]

Thats a point. But even ATA Raid is more costly in terms of system resources than single SCSI drive.
BB2K i still dont see why you want Raid0+1. You running a big web server ?
Yes as far as money goes SCSI units are *way* more expensive than ATA ones. But consider those gains:
- speed
- mechanical superiority (=greater reliability)
- speed
- lower system resources
- speed
- lower overall noise/heat (compared to ATA Raid...)
- did i mention speed ?

If i had to choose between a RAID of 5400rpm barracuda's that have 1y warranty, and a single SCSI 15K drive with 3 to 5y of warranty, it would be the 15K drive. Why ?
Look the figures (storagereview.com). One 15K unit is *quiet* even compared to 7.2K ATA units. Heat problem ? No more heat problem with modern drives. You pay a premium price, but you got what you paid for - a mechanical jewel.
(side note: it seems that 15K drives are generally quieter than 10K ones...)

Ah about transfer rates. You must take the protocol into account. With SCSI the controller (usually a powerful RISC chip) manages the transfer and concurrent accesses. With IDE each drive try to get the bus for itself. That was a short explanation but there are several good documents about this on the web. Anyway the result is - multiple drives live happier on a SCSI bus than on an IDE bus.
Another point, if you're considering a single drive, the fastest drive today is the Seagate Cheetah 15.3 which can transfer between 51 MB/s and 76 MB/s. The fastest IDE drive is the WD Caviar 800JB which does 29 MB/s to 49 MB/s... (figures range from inner platter zone to outer zone). And in no way two caviars in Raid0+1 will perform like a 15K.3, due to Raid overhead (and ATA-specific issues on top of this...)

In short, if money doesnt matter go SCSI. If you're on a budget, you're looking at the wrong site to begin with In any case, you always get what you paid for.

(edit) argh i forgot to mention access times. 15K drive access times contribute a *lot* to the 'snappiness' of operations... Why did ppl like old Quantum drives, because those old drives had the lowest access times around...

[bigben2k]

Good point. With 160 GB/s transfer rate, I don't need the array anymore!

looks like I'm headed for a 19160, with one SCSI HDD.

[gmat]

I'd steer clear from the 19160. Try the 29160N instead. The 19160 is known to have some compatibility problems, and performance issues. The 29160N is not so expensive and it's rock solid. It's the 32-bit PCI version of the 29160 (which is 64-bit PCI). Don't buy a controller you'll want to change in 1 year...

PS: I know lots of ppl who still run happily with their 2940...

[bigben2k]

The 2940 is nice, but if I'm going to jump into SCSI, I think I'll make the effort of going to 160 transfer rate.

Why the 29160N(32bit) and not the 29160(64bit)?

[nuclear]

Well depending on where you are gmat
Here in canada, even taking into account that i already have the scsi controller and the raid controller, it is still way more costly to run scsi drives. One seagate cheetah X15 is still 378$ for the 18g version (second gen) compared to around 159$ for one 60g 7200rpm.

If you have the money to go scsi, cool, that's great, but i don't and there are many who don't too. So IDE raid is still a good solution before going SCSI.

Also i'm really sure that many looking at this site don't have the money to buy SCSI drives, so maybe you could tell me where to look so I find all of those who have scsi

If BB2K has the money to go SCSI, then do it, if not, then serial ata (which solves many problem of the current ata standard) is a good solution.

Oh and by the way, i do agree that scsi is better, it's simply that there are alternative that are cheaper that might be able to do the required task.

[gmat]

First, the 64bit version is more expensive. And next, if you don't have a 64-bit PCI slot (those are longer than conventional PCI slots) it's useless.
I *think* you still can use a 64bit card in a 32bit slot (do not take my word for it) so if you plan to get a duallie mobo (on which you'll find 1 or 2 64bit slots) you can buy the 64bit version. But before i'd check thoroughly if it's possible...

(nuclear): i was joking dude. But jokes aside, it's a geek site with ppl who watercool (or worse..) their PC. That is an expensive hobby, to say the least. Ah and i did put the disclaimer: "IF money doesnt count"

[bigben2k]

Let's see...

I can pickup an AN-29160 (64bit) for $189 (without shopping around), and a Fujitsu (yuck!) 160 HDD, with 18 GB for $120. Total: $309 (+ cable, 3.00).

On the other hand, I could pickup 2 SATA drives, and run them off of the A7N8X in raid 0. Cost: about the price of two 20 GB ATA drives($70). Total $140.

The problem is that the SATA configuration would be raid 0 or raid 1 only, not both. Since raid 0 can be fragile, I'd have to choose raid 1, for reliability.

Unless I get a controller that would allow me to do raid 0/1 over 4 drives, then I'm looking at 75 for the controller, and 4*70 for the drives. Total 350 (with 40GB though, in SCSI, that would total 430), and I'm back to ATA, because there's no SATA controller that'll run raid 0/1 out there, yet (right?).