jimscreechy

After the posts last week debating the pro's and con's of various backup and restore methods and not too long before that praising Seagate for reliability, it had to happen. Yes I experienced my first Seagate Hard Disk failure, Bummer. Still the good thing is my local retailer has agreed to change it no problem the bad is of course the re-imaging.

While I am on the subject, how many feel the connectors used on Sata drives are woefully inadequate? They fall way short of the nice secure feeling that the old IDE jobs used to give. If it is the one thing about them I hate, that is it. TErrible design.

crazijoe

Sorry to hear about your dead drive. It's bound to happen to one of us. That still wouldn't deter me away from Seagate.

I think the design is adequate, however I believe that there should be some sort of locking mechanism to hold the connectors in place. God fobid if you have to move the machine. I replaced my SATA data connectors with 90 deg units and they seem to work better.
I do know that WD makes a secure connector for SATA. It combines the power and data line on it, however it only has the legacy power connection.

gullducott

So what did you loose?

MAQ_FR

I can't say here who I work for but being a PC & Server manufacturer, I am responsible for Server support in Europe , Middle East , sub-Sahara Africa & Brazil (don't ask why just Brazil )

Any way , on the back of Jim & Joe's comments I did a bit of digging about. and for servers (only) I found this interesting:

N° of hard disks replaced to year end 25/03/2005: 1654.

Of these:
SCSI 48% ( but much bigger volume)
SATA 18% (only introduced in low end servers last 2 years)
IDE 22% (Older server technology going out of warranty)
Fiber 12%

pro-rata though, SATA have more failures (than SCSI).

By manufacturer:

Includes all SATA, SCSI, Fiber & IDE

Seagate 12% (by sales & installations are in 76% of customers )
Maxtor 31%
Hitachi 16%
Fujitsu 9%
Western Digital 11%
Others 21% (includes older brands & custom models)

So it shows that although across ALL technologies, Seagate are most widly used but fail (pro-rata) least often. Maxtor, we ditched last summer due to issues on SCSI disks & we now customize other disks to Maxtor sizes for replacement - normally with Seagate or now Fujitsu)

Just thought you'd all like to know that Seagate are Ok with us.
P.S other manufacturers are in the same ball-park area.

Just for info you understand

crazijoe

MAQ_FR,
Very nice statistics. I really think Maxtor needs to improve on their quality. I think they are staying in business just by the sheer volume of what they sell. A lot of people are are rather upset by their change in warranty policy.

linderman

Thanks MAQ_FR

for taking the time to give us some unbiased info !!

I feel better knowing my favorite drives are good performers for more people than just me. Seagate & WD will get my business & reccomendations for other people.

regards:


joe

Terrister

Same here. Been using WD and Seagate since the late 80's. Not always the fastest, rarely the cheapest. They both have been making drives a long time and make good solid drives.

jimscreechy

Well a turn up for the books. Was on the games drive, but turns out there is nothing wrong with the drive at all, seems the cable just came loose. Thank Christ, so I'm back in business

linderman

Well good to hear it ! Keep the pedal to the metal.



regards


joe

jimscreechy

Yes indeed! I was almost at the end of half life 2 so with any luck can get it out the way tonight too... just hate to leave these important chores hanging. Cheers!!