Adding memory to Sky+
 

tony sayer wrote:
Pyriform 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:)

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my
Maxtors. Was it a specific model you had trouble with? What were the
nature of the failures?

The 40 and 80 GB drives mainly bad sectors and complete disk failure.
Perhaps they had a bad batch, perhaps I was unlucky having bought a
lot of them for a number of PC's we maintain, but never ever had a
Seagate fail!...

That's the trouble with hard drives. Most of us base our opinions on our own
limited experience, and a few bad ones can colour our views for ever...
Seagate acquired Maxtor a year or so ago, and before that Maxtor acquired
Quantum. So the whole hard drive industry is rather inbred, and I have my
doubts that there are significant differences in reliability between brands,
except where there is a major design flaw in a particular model, as happens
from time to time.

Personally, I've yet to have a Maxtor fail, whereas the last hard drive I
replaced because it was faulty was a Seagate, oddly enough! Of course, the
fact that I've just rebuilt a PC for someone using a Maxtor drive makes me
want them to be reliable! The curious thing is, I initially installed a
Samsung drive, only to have it die completely during the install (click,
click, click). I got an identical replacement and tested it using Samsung's
software, and that yielded countless DRQ timeouts on two different
motherboards using two different SATA cables. I returned it and swapped it
for a Maxtor, which passed all the tests without error!

There is a postscript to this sorry tale. I got a phone call to say that the
PC wouldn't boot ("Insert proper boot media"). I decided to bring it home to
look at it more closely. Of course, it booted perfectly. I used the PC at
various times over the next few days, stress testing it thoroughly each
time, and eventually the problem recurred. I determined that the cause was
the SATA cable. Thermal stress and vibrations from the hard drive were
causing it to slowly back out of the socket. This never manifested as data
loss in a running system (though it might have done so eventually), but
always as failure of the BIOS to detect the drive when the PC was rebooted
after cooling down. Replacing it with a latching SATA connector seems to
have solved the problem.

I'm now wondering if the dodgy SATA cable somehow killed the Samsung drives,
though this does seem implausible... But two faulty drives in succession
seems equally implausible!

Adding memory to Sky+
 

Pyriform wrote (apparently) in uk.tech.digital-tv on Thu 11 Jan
2007 23:53:32:

tony sayer wrote:
Pyriform 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:)

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my
Maxtors. Was it a specific model you had trouble with? What
were the nature of the failures?

The 40 and 80 GB drives mainly bad sectors and complete disk
failure. Perhaps they had a bad batch, perhaps I was unlucky
having bought a lot of them for a number of PC's we maintain,
but never ever had a Seagate fail!...

That's the trouble with hard drives. Most of us base our opinions
on our own limited experience, and a few bad ones can colour our
views for ever... Seagate acquired Maxtor a year or so ago, and
before that Maxtor acquired Quantum. So the whole hard drive
industry is rather inbred, and I have my doubts that there are
significant differences in reliability between brands, except
where there is a major design flaw in a particular model, as
happens from time to time.

Personally, I've yet to have a Maxtor fail, whereas the last hard
drive I replaced because it was faulty was a Seagate, oddly
enough! Of course, the fact that I've just rebuilt a PC for
someone using a Maxtor drive makes me want them to be reliable!
The curious thing is, I initially installed a Samsung drive, only
to have it die completely during the install (click, click,
click). I got an identical replacement and tested it using
Samsung's software, and that yielded countless DRQ timeouts on
two different motherboards using two different SATA cables. I
returned it and swapped it for a Maxtor, which passed all the
tests without error!

There is a postscript to this sorry tale. I got a phone call to
say that the PC wouldn't boot ("Insert proper boot media"). I
decided to bring it home to look at it more closely. Of course,
it booted perfectly. I used the PC at various times over the next
few days, stress testing it thoroughly each time, and eventually
the problem recurred. I determined that the cause was the SATA
cable. Thermal stress and vibrations from the hard drive were
causing it to slowly back out of the socket. This never
manifested as data loss in a running system (though it might have
done so eventually), but always as failure of the BIOS to detect
the drive when the PC was rebooted after cooling down. Replacing
it with a latching SATA connector seems to have solved the
problem.

I'm now wondering if the dodgy SATA cable somehow killed the
Samsung drives, though this does seem implausible... But two
faulty drives in succession seems equally implausible!

Have had three failed Maxtor drives replaced under warranty in the
last four years, out of five purchased. Also had a poor record with
Fujitsu drives before that. Have decided for blood pressure reasons
to just try a different manufacturer each time I buy a new one, at
least with no brand allegiance it'll be more random if one fails.

Saying that, I've never lost all the data with (P)ATA drives, having
a spare power supply to power the drive separately to the rest of
the PC has always given me the chance to copy all the data off
before returning the faulty drive.
--
MrGuest
Always, seemingly, on the road to nowhere

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+
 

....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