Viktor Pilpenok wrote in a message to All:

 VP> Hello All!

 VP> Here is some interesting question i've got: Why in different
 VP> regions of the world different hard drives manufacturers are
 VP> percieved totally different? for example:

 VP> Some people in the US say that fujitsu drives are good and maxtor
 VP> are bad, while in israel fujitsu are considered total crap and
 VP> maxtor are one of the best hd brands. Or for example Seagate - in
 VP> russia they are considered one of the most long-living drives while
 VP> i had something like 6 of those crashing on me, mostly while they
 VP> are still on guarantee period (ie 1-2 years since they were
 VP> purchased).

 VP> I also heard many people from the US say they like IBM drives. But
 VP> both in Israel and in Russia there are considered crap.

 VP> Anyway why do those differences occur? Maybe it's the climate or
 VP> something? Or the drives sold here are not quite the same drives
 VP> sold elsewhere? Anyway, this looks odd...

I think it's more a matter of how they're used,  combined with the luck
that some people have compared to some other people.  I've had *one* drive
fail on me in all the time I've been operating computers,  which is a good
long time. And a couple of very early Seagate ST-251 drives that still ran
okay when I last tried them but which were getting *very* noisy in terms of
their bearings,  but I'd also been running them 24/7 in the very early days
of running my BBS.

Much of what I run here is on all the time,  so the temperatures,  etc. are
pretty stable.  It does get pretty hot in this room sometimes,  and it was
during one of those spells,  with the windows all closed up,  when we'd
gone away for an out-of-state trip that I had the one drive failure.  Next
trip we took after that we left the window open and a fan pulling air
through the room,  and I didn't have any trouble.

Right now I have Fujitsu, Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate, and some other brands
all running here,  with no problems apparent.  Sizes run from 80M (in my
firewall/router) on up to 6.4G (a Maxtor and a Seagate).  I've been looking
toward getting something bigger,  probably in the 80G range,  but haven't
gotten around to it yet.

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