Warranty Length Not Related To Drive Life?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron Reaugh
  • Start date Start date
Jesper Monsted said:
Or just snip Ron entirely - let the jihad guys in Iraq have him.
Click to expand...

He'd fit right in with those wackos. Pretty soon we'd have terrorist
attacks on SCSI controller makers, not to mention the heretics at
storagereview.com... 8)
 
Ron Reaugh said:
Has anyone ever heard anyone claim that the length of a HD's warranty was
simply a marketing and price point decision by the mfg and the warranty
length has nothing to do with expected drive life?
Click to expand...

It cannot be *totally* unrelated. A manufacturer doesn't want a whole
lot of returns. You can expect that *most* drives will *at least*
make it through the warranty period.

A hard drive is free to continue operation well past the warranty
expiration time. As far as I can tell, the 3 to 1 year standard ATA
warrenty shorting has had no impact on actual drive lifetimes.
 
He'd fit right in with those wackos. Pretty soon we'd have terrorist
attacks on SCSI controller makers, not to mention the heretics at
storagereview.com... 8)
Click to expand...

Actually, i'd prefer if they'd just implant a large storage system in his
rectal passage, but seeing him get blown up by a tomahawk missile could be
fun, too :)
 
Impmon said:
A frying pan would help as those high speed drives can get really hot.
Nothing like fresh eggs and bacon while reading emails in the morning.

Do make sure your PC case have excellent cooling system before
considering 10K+ drives.
Click to expand...

Indeed they can - I have a Lian Li case which, so far, appears upto the job.
I was looking at getting CD bay drive coolers for any 15k drives I get..

Thanks for your advice

PM
 
Ah, the SCSI drives are Quantum - they've always been good, in my
experience :)
Click to expand...

Same here, but now they are a part of Maxtor and, consequently, I wasn't
sure if you meant they had deteriorated.

Thank you.

PM
 
Johan Kullstam said:
It cannot be *totally* unrelated. A manufacturer doesn't want a whole
lot of returns. You can expect that *most* drives will *at least*
make it through the warranty period.
Click to expand...

Do ya think!
A hard drive is free to continue operation well past the warranty
expiration time. As far as I can tell, the 3 to 1 year standard ATA
warrenty shorting has had no impact on actual drive lifetimes.
Click to expand...

Do ya think!
 
Ron Reaugh said:
So in a pen
stroke a company could change its HD warranty length and even retroactively
without great exposure SINCE the drives were ALREADY going to last for 5
years anyway as I've always said.
Click to expand...

Yes, just as you "always said" there was nothing wrong with the Deskstar
75GXPs. We know better now, don't we?
 
Mike said:
Yes, just as you "always said" there was nothing wrong with the Deskstar
75GXPs. We know better now, don't we?
Click to expand...

What's this "we", White Man? You have a mouse in your pocket?
 
Mike said:
It's the royal 'we', old chap.
Click to expand...

So of what are you the king?
It's neither a mouse nor a gun. It means I'm pleased to see you.
Click to expand...

If you knew why you were being asked if there was a mouse in your pocket you
would be a good deal less pleased, Round Eyes.
 
Yes, just as you "always said" there was nothing wrong with the
Deskstar 75GXPs. We know better now, don't we?
Click to expand...

Oooh, those were almost as nice as the 36LZX 18gig ultrastars. I had 50
servers delivered, each with one of those drives. I had about 60 exchanges
on them before my vendor started giving me seagates :)
 
Oooh, those were almost as nice as the 36LZX 18gig ultrastars. I had 50
servers delivered, each with one of those drives. I had about 60 exchanges
on them before my vendor started giving me seagates :)
Click to expand...

HP Surestore 2000. Six drives, ten failures, we finally gave up when we
called HP for a replacement and got routed to some noname 'support'
organization. Apperently they'd sold the whole drive business, lock, stock,
and warranty.
 
Ron Reaugh:
Has anyone ever heard anyone claim that the length of a HD's warranty was
simply a marketing and price point decision by the mfg and the warranty
length has nothing to do with expected drive life? Somewhere I think I
remember someone making such a claim and a bunch of trolls tried
unsuccessfully to shoot him down?
Click to expand...

Such claim would be wrong...

As with any product the percentage of failures will
increase over time; e.g. .5 % during first, 1 % du-
ring second and 2 % during third year of life.

Thus increasing the warranty time does indeed cost
money...

Manufactures will work hard to get the failure rate
as much down as possible (less cost, competitive
advantage).
 
Nonsense. It's the opposite for the first three years: over 1% in first year,
under 1% in next two.
 
Eric Gisin:
Nonsense. It's the opposite for the first three years: over 1% in first year,
under 1% in next two.
Click to expand...

Assuming you're right, after how many years the failure
rate would have come down to 0 % then?

Believe me, the rate goes up ... (until no drive will
work anymore, i.e. 100 % failures; just wait - may
take a few years, but it will go there :-)
 
Michael Giegerich said:
Believe me, the rate goes up ... (until no drive will
work anymore, i.e. 100 % failures; just wait - may
take a few years, but it will go there :-)
Click to expand...

It's usually taken for granted that the failure rate is plotted as a
"bathtub" curve. Here's an attempt at ASCII - view with a monospaced
font:


r |
e |
l |
i | ___________________________________________
a | / \
b | / \
i | / \
l | / \
i | / \
t | / \
y | / \
+--------------------------------------------------------------
time
^ ^ ^ ^
1 2 3 4


The x-axis is time, the y-axis is failure rate.

What this says is that drive failure is high in their infancy (between
points 1 and 2). If they see out infancy, they tend to continue working
(between points 2 and 3) until they reach some point at which they wear
out, then failure rates increase (between points 3 and 4.)

Traditionally, the gap between points 2 and 3 has been three years for
consumer-level (=IDE) drives, and five years for high-end (=SCSI)
drives, coinciding with the typical warranty period offered on these
devices. Of course, this is generalising wildly and depends very much
on how the drive is treated prior to installation, its operating
conditions, etc. etc.
 
Michael said:
Eric Gisin:

Assuming you're right, after how many years the failure
rate would have come down to 0 % then?

Believe me, the rate goes up ... (until no drive will
work anymore, i.e. 100 % failures; just wait - may
take a few years, but it will go there :-)
Click to expand...

Common phenomenon with electronics of any kind--a high rate of "infant
mortality" in the first few months of operation, then a relatively low
failure rate until pieces start dying of old age.
 
J. Clarke said:
Common phenomenon with electronics of any kind--a high rate of "infant
mortality" in the first few months of operation, then a relatively low
failure rate until pieces start dying of old age.
Click to expand...

Same thing i've seen in most drives. Once you weed out the badly
manufactured ones, you'll see little or no failures. After several years of
non-stop operation, turning them off will make a buttload of them die at
once, though.
 
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