Great job IDE disk drive manufacturers!
Rather than compete on quality, all have gone the route of 'Cheaper is better'. As of October 1, 2002, all new IDE drives except a few special (read expensive) ones will carry only a one year guarantee instead of the traditional three years.
Some Justice Dept. lawyers should look into the coincidence of the simultaneous October 1 date with the same warranty change. Can you say "Collusion?"
The IDE drive makers reasons are twofold as far as I can tell. First, they say they are aligning themselves with the one year guarantee that the low cost system vendors are giving. Second, since one year is cheaper than three, they are saving you money.
Mark this event folks. This is the beginning of no-quality computers. If the manufacturers were making any profit with three year warranties, well they can save even more money by scrimping on design, manufacturing and testing.
Sure, right.
This change will give SCSI drive vendors a big boost as most SCSI drives are warranted for five years. It will also increase sales of backup systems based on CD-R, DVD-R and tape. And it will increase business for data recovery specialists and offsite backup.
It has always been true that failure rates follow a bathtub shaped curve. Failure rates start relatively high in the first days of operation, but rapidly fall off, reaching very low failure rates after 30 days. That rate stays low for most of the lifetime of the product, typically several years. The failure rate rises at the end of life (which varies) until all but a few have failed.
Obviously, products which have design or manufacturing flaws follow a modified version of this pattern, but with much shorter lives and higher failure rates. These products never reach a stable, low failure rate for a long time.
Recently, IBM has sold its disk drive business to Hitachi and Fujitsu has terminated it's production of disk drives. Of all the drive manufacturers out there, Hitachi was the only one with quality at IBM's level. Others have come close, but Hitachi has been the IBM alternative for many large users. Let's hope Hitachi doesn't join the low cost, no quality crowd.
What has been left out of this discussion? It's the value of the data you store on your one year guarantee disk. What happens when it fails? Not if, when.
If you haven't backed it up, you either pay $Big Buck$ to a data recovery firm, with no guarantee of any recovery, or more likely, kiss the data goodbye and start rebuilding, poorer but wiser.
Gone are the files of your daughter's pictures taken by digital camera. Gone are the emails you sent and received. Gone are the programs and music you bought electronically. Gone are the scans of paper records, long since discarded. Are you getting the picture? It's the digital equivalent of having your house burn down - not a pretty sight.
A month ago I was searching for a pair of large IDE drives so I could mirror them for reliable storage. By coincidence, Van Horn - a long time friend, pointed me at a special SCSI drive deal. Four 47 GB drives for $119 at Corpsys.com.
Don't jump to buy them without knowing what you will get. These are older Seagate full height drives, weighing about 10 pounds each and requiring a good ultra SCSI controller and a big tower case with a good power supply. Each drive draws almost 40 watts at startup, 24 watts while running.
Most current cases, even towers, don't have room for four full height 5.25 inch drives. That's equivalent to eight 3.5 inch, 1.3 inch high drives, not the one inch and smaller current 3.5 drives. Care must be taken for adequate air flow and solid installation.
But if you have the right stuff and know what you are doing, go ahead. If that's too much storage for you, they also have four 23 GB drives of the same type for a mere $79 plus shipping.
By sheer coincidence, again, both Van and I were already in the process of setting up systems to sell backup services over the Internet. Thanks to the IDE manufacturers, Van and I can look forward to profitable operation.
Stupid ideas like the one I've just talked about aren't unique to IDE drives, or even disk manufacturers. They can happen to any company at any time and need to be fought from within and without.
I have long thought that companies that don't pay attention to research and quality will have a brief but exciting life. When they squeeze the quality out of the product to save a few cents, the end is near.
Research expenditures are another flag for long lived companies. It's the cost of staying in business by being better than their competition, not just cheaper.
I ran across an excellent article about research just a few days ago and commend it to your attention. It's "They Might Be Giants" by Harry Goldstein, Special Report Editor at the IEEE. It does an excellent job of explaining why R&D is important.
I think quality is another measure of a company, in similar fashion to research. It's harder to prove because the measure of quality is so hard to agree on and cost out. But like art, I know what I don't like when I see it.
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