[lug] Hard Drive Manufacturer Suggestion

[John Karns]

On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, Nate Duehr wrote:

> I've *never* had a laptop drive fail.  I have at least one laptop here 
> that's around 10 years old that's still working -- the keyboard's 
> broken, the screen has scratches, and the case looks beat to hell, but 
> the drive's never failed. The only laptop drive failure I've had was 
> when I dropped the laptop (inside a briefcase) off the roof of my car. 
> The LCD also didn't survive the fall.

My theory is that with the older laptops, which had a cooler running CPU 
and slower hd spindle speed, failures were less common; exclusive of 
physical problems, like dropping or otherwise being jarred.  The failures 
I had were all due to being jarred while spinning.

More recently, an IBM (pre-Hitachi I believe) 48GB that came in a used 
laptop I bought from a heavy gamer was in its death throes when I got 
it.  I suppose that it suffered from over-heating, but I also had read 
that those particular 48GB drives were particularly troublesome, and that 
there was a class suit in progress or being considered against IBM in 
regards to them.  I replaced it with an IBM / Hitachi 80 GB / 4200 rpm a 
year ago, that's been extremely quiet and reliable.  But I also run an app 
to monitor temp and control the fans, to run the 'top about 15 or 20 
degrees C cooler than it does without it.

The twin to that 'top with a slower CPU runs a 20 GB IBM, also reliable, 
but started to flake out once a couple of years ago while running the CPU 
under high load for maybe 20 minutes.  After shutting down, and removing 
the drive, it was almost too hot to touch.  When new, it was as quiet as 
the 80 GB (fluid bearings in both), but I think that over three yrs of 
everyday use with ocassional exposure to high temps, the characteristics 
of the bearings changed, and now one can hear it spinning from another 
room.  Two other IBM travelstar drives have served w/o incident for 5 yrs.

Going back almost 20 yrs, to the days of '286s and 20 and 40 MB 5.25" half 
height drives, I had a Seagate 40 MB hd that developed a problem they used 
to call (IIRC) "stitching".  During cool-down, the heads resting on the 
platter would "set" into the coating.  Then upon powering up the box, it 
was necessary to take the drive in hand, and with some wrist-flicking, 
rotate the drive sharply in a back-and-forth manner, to unstick the heads 
from the platter so that the drive could spin up.  The problem was 
discussed on some of the bulletin boards of the time, evidence that it was 
manifest in that mfr's products over a period of time, until they changed 
their mfg process.

So, my point is that as hd technology has been in a continual state of 
flux, the drive mfrs seem to have had their ups and downs.  Probably goes 
w/o saying for the experienced people here, but maybe not for some of the 
less experienced.  The bottom line is to keep in mind that quality can 
vary within the product lines of any given mfr, as the mfg location and 
process could be different, even amoung drives of the same make and model.

-- 
John Karns