Adding memory to Sky+
 

tony sayer wrote:

You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother:)

I'll second that.

I've seen more dead Maxtors than any other brand. In fact of all the
times I have been called out to change a dead drive (dozens of times),
I can't remember an occasion when it wasn't a Maxtor.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/8vef5
UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
BBC/ITV reception trouble? ; http://www.astra2d.com/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

Adding memory to Sky+
 

Jomtien wrote:
tony sayer wrote:

You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother:)

I'll second that.

I've seen more dead Maxtors than any other brand. In fact of all the
times I have been called out to change a dead drive (dozens of times),
I can't remember an occasion when it wasn't a Maxtor.

How do you know this isn't simply because they are the most commonly fitted
brand amongst your customer base?

Adding memory to Sky+
 

Gaz wrote:

The large capacity maxtors are incredibly unreliable, I have
encountered a large number of failures, i have one in my machine at
the moment holding some video, and other none essential stuff, it
runs extremely hot, virtually burning to the touch, and i honestly
expect it to fail.

Then why not add a 50p fan to prevent it failing?
(assuming its a PC as it has "video and other non-essentail stuff")

If you know its running too hot then its your own fault it fails
when you didn't cool it properly.

--
Mike

Adding memory to Sky+
 

The message k
from "Mike Redrobe" contains these words:

Gaz wrote:

The large capacity maxtors are incredibly unreliable, I have
encountered a large number of failures, i have one in my machine at
the moment holding some video, and other none essential stuff, it
runs extremely hot, virtually burning to the touch, and i honestly
expect it to fail.

Then why not add a 50p fan to prevent it failing?
(assuming its a PC as it has "video and other non-essentail stuff")

If you know its running too hot then its your own fault it fails
when you didn't cool it properly.

Quite right too! The main problem is that most cases make little or no
provision for cooling airflow around the "Hard drive Bays"[1]. This was
ok when IDE drives ran at 3600 and 5400 rpm and only dissipated some 3
to 6 watts when idle and having more than a single hard drive was
considered a luxury.

Now that today's entry level drives spin at 7,200 rpm and dissipate 8
watts and above, those same traditional case designs are seriously
compromising drive reliability, especially if _both_ "drive bays" are
occupied. In the case of Maxtors, this effect is aggravated by their
even higher cooling demands despite their operating temperaturel upper
limit being 5 degrees higher than the competition.

I suspect that, given suitable cooling, the Maxtors may turn out to be
no more _unreliable_ [2] than any of the other brands. Don't get me
wrong, I'm not endorsing Maxtor, just pointing out why they seem to fall
victim to failure more frequently than other brands.

[1] Proper hard drive bays would be designed to keep their 'precious
cargo' nice and cool. The so called "hard drive bay" in most cases is an
insult to this concept.

[2] Long gone are the happy days when most drives would outlive their
usefulness if they managed to survive their first month of service. Now
that the hard drive manufacturers have embraced the design concepts
developed in Formula One Grand Prix race car design, it's more accurate
to describe it as a case of finding the least _unreliable_ brand or
model of drive rather than finding the most reliable.

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Adding memory to Sky+
 

....snip...

Do you lads all reboot your machines often? I have a number of old machines
with equally old disks by various manufacturers none of which have ever
failed (fingers well crossed here!). Similarly, my employers (software
company - 100s of PCs) rarely see disk failures on desktops. The key point
is that we NEVER turn the PCs off or let the disks spin down.

Yes, I know, bad for the environment etc - but worse than having to
manufacture a new drive and dispose of the old one because on/off cycles
have killed it? Debatable (don't waste NG time on this, please!).

The most stress a disk ever gets is when you turn it on - do this more often
and they will fail more often.

Paul DS.

Adding memory to Sky+
 

The large capacity maxtors are incredibly unreliable, I have encountered a
large number of failures, i have one in my machine at the moment holding
some video, and other none essential stuff, it runs extremely hot,
virtually burning to the touch, and i honestly expect it to fail.

Where is it physically in the machine? Even something as simply as moving
the drive down one or two slots so that air can circulate around it more
easily will help cooling no end. I find manufacturers often put all the
drives/CD/DVD-ROMs as close together as possible which is rubbish from a
cooling perspective.

Paul DS.

Adding memory to Sky+
 

Paul D.Smith wrote:
The large capacity maxtors are incredibly unreliable, I have encountered a
large number of failures, i have one in my machine at the moment holding
some video, and other none essential stuff, it runs extremely hot,
virtually burning to the touch, and i honestly expect it to fail.

Where is it physically in the machine? Even something as simply as moving
the drive down one or two slots so that air can circulate around it more
easily will help cooling no end. I find manufacturers often put all the
drives/CD/DVD-ROMs as close together as possible which is rubbish from a
cooling perspective.

Paul DS.

I have a V3 pace box with a 160 drive of which half is locked. WTF?
Why? If you install a 250 gb drive, will the box only use half of that
as well?

cheers

Adding memory to Sky+
 

"Paul D.Smith" wrote:

Do you lads all reboot your machines often? I have a number of old machines
with equally old disks by various manufacturers none of which have ever
failed (fingers well crossed here!). Similarly, my employers (software
company - 100s of PCs) rarely see disk failures on desktops. The key point
is that we NEVER turn the PCs off or let the disks spin down.

You can get good and bad batches of PCs, and that's more likely to
colour your opinions than anything else, even if the problem is blamed
on the wrong thing. Most PCs can be switched on and off without any
reliability problems.

Thing is... If you *do* have a bad batch - say PCs with an
under-specified power supply, or PCs that write random corruptions to
the disk, then you're most likely to discover the fault when the PC is
switched on. When you're recovering from a power blackout, that's a bad
time to discover that you've got a bunch of PC failures to deal with. So
if you have some PCs that normally do have to be left switched on,
because they are servers or whatever, then arrange a maintenance cycle
in which they are power cycled individually about once per month.

--
Dave Farrance

Adding memory to Sky+
 

"Pyriform" wrote in message
...
Jomtien wrote:
tony sayer wrote:

You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother:)

I'll second that.

I've seen more dead Maxtors than any other brand. In fact of all the
times I have been called out to change a dead drive (dozens of times),
I can't remember an occasion when it wasn't a Maxtor.

How do you know this isn't simply because they are the most commonly
fitted brand amongst your customer base?
FWIW As with printers 99% of printers are fitted with Canon parts. The same
for hard drives, all the platters and mechinisems are manufactured by one
manufacture. Hey think about all the one brands in the super markets, you
really think there are loads of factoreys making cornflakes. Get real guys.
Joe

Adding memory to Sky+
 

Joe wrote:
"Pyriform" wrote in message
...
Jomtien wrote:
tony sayer wrote:

You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things
for Seagate's which give no bother:)

I'll second that.

I've seen more dead Maxtors than any other brand. In fact of all the
times I have been called out to change a dead drive (dozens of
times),
I can't remember an occasion when it wasn't a Maxtor.

How do you know this isn't simply because they are the most commonly
fitted brand amongst your customer base?
FWIW As with printers 99% of printers are fitted with Canon parts.
The same for hard drives, all the platters and mechinisems are
manufactured by one manufacture. Hey think about all the one brands
in the super markets, you really think there are loads of factoreys
making cornflakes. Get real guys. Joe

What nonsense!