Hi Felix, sorry to disagree but....
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Felix Miata 
> On 2007/01/17 16:41 (GMT-0500) inkleput{at}isp.com apparently typed:
> 
> > Having a choice between Hitachi or Maxtor, 320gb HD - one as good as the
> > other?
> 
> The only thing I'm less inclined to buy than Maxtor is Western Digital.
> OTOH, Maxtor is now merged into Seagate, which up to the merger had been
> my brand of choice since IBM totally turned its production over to
> Hitachi. Last ten I bought have been mostly Seagate (with an odd Samsung
> or Fuji) as Seagate's the only brand AFAIK with a 5 year warranty on its
> ATA devices.
> 
  Western digital can hardly be faulted as a company since they have sold
so many more drives than most other companies and still maintained failure
rates well under 1 percent.  They are acclaimed by every magazine and
hardware website and often garner top honors in every category.  They are
often slightly lower priced (thus the greater volume, I suppose) yest still
extremely reliable.  I have a few WD drives that are 10 years old that
still work though they are useless from a size and speed standpoint by now.
 I have several that are 7-8 years old that endured 24-7 operation under
extreme circumstances ( I had 4 of them in 2 machines in a non
air-conditioned woodworking and refinishing shop) that still work today. 
Out of 4 IBM drives I've owned 3 failed though admittedly 2 of them were
the dreaded 75GXP's.  While I've also had excellent service from Seagate,
aside form what the industry says (which is positive), my own experience is
that I have owned some 36 WD drives over the ye
ars (and many more that were sold in machines so I don't know what became
of them) and only had 2 failures, even though some of these machine were
heavily overclocked putting considerable extra strain on the hard drives. 
I know "less than 1 percent, feels like 100% when it happens to you,
but that is merely the luck of the draw and not at all the Big Picture. 
Any large scale database will certainly bear out my results.  Part of the
proof of that is that the hard drive market is one of, if not *the* most
competitive parts market of any PC component.  Just to survive at all is
testament to a whoe sutie of abilities.  It is one reason IBM got out, low
profit, high investment and relatively thankless for a true miracle of
electromechanical technology.  It's the "mechanical" part that is
so scary to manufacturers and should be to users.  All hard drives will at
some point fail.  Wheras it would be possible to keep a CPU running
indefinitely given the right conditions.
> 
> Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

Anyway, just my twapence
Jimmy




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



 
Yahoo! Groups Links

 To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/os2hardware/

 Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

 To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/os2hardware/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

 To change settings via email:
    mailto:os2hardware-digest{at}yahoogroups.com 
    mailto:os2hardware-fullfeatured{at}yahoogroups.com

 To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    os2hardware-unsubscribe{at}yahoogroups.com

 Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 

---