Re: ATA cables and drives

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Molle Bestefich wrote:

> I'm looking for new harddrives.
>
> This is my experience so far.
>
>
> SATA cables:
> =============
>
> I have zero good experiences with any SATA cables.
> They've all been crap so far.
>
>
> 3.5" ATA harddrives buyable where I live:
> ==========================================
>
> (All drives are 7200rpm, for some reason.)


Unless you live where delivery services don't go, you can get 10k SATA 
or 15k Ultra320 drives from many vendors. I checked newegg just as a 
reference, there are many others.

The rest of your questions sound like you are running the drives very 
hot, and drive life is inversely proportional to temperature. There are 
mil-spec drives which will live at 100C, but they are not readily 
available and cost way more than keeping drives cool. I have no idea 
what kind of SATA cable failure you are seeing, I have some in machines 
I take to give presentations, and if 10k miles in the back of an SUV 
didn't cause problems, I doubt any normal operation would. I've had them 
bad when I got them, but if they work once they keep working, in my 
experience.

>
>
> I've tried Maxtor and IBM (now Hitachi) harddrives.
> Both makes have failed on me, but most of the time due to horrible 
> packaging.
>
> I don't care a split-second whether one kind is marginally faster than
> the other, so all the reviews on AnandTech etc. are utterly useless to
> me.  There's an infinite number of more effective ways to get better
> performance than to buy a slightly faster harddrive.
>
> I DO care about quality, namely:
> * How often the drives has catastrophic failure,
> * How they handle heat (dissipation & acceptance - how hot before it 
> fails?),
> * How big the spare area is,
> * How often they have single-sector failures,
> * How long the manufacturer warranty lasts,
> * How easy the manufacturer is to work with wrt. warranty.
>
> I haven't been able to figure the spare area size, heat properties,
> etc. for any drives.
> Thus my only criteria so far has been manufacturer warranty: How much
> bitching do I get when I tell them my drive doesn't work.
>
> My main experience is with Maxtor.
> Maxtor has been none less than superb wrt. warranty!
> Download an ISO with a diag tool, burn the CD, boot the CD, type in
> the fault code it prints on Maxtor's site, and a day or two later
> you've got a new drive in the mail and packaging to ship the old one
> back in.  If something odd happens, call them up and they're extremely
> helpful.
>
> Unfortunately, I lack thorough experience with the other brands.
>
>
> Questions:
> ===========
>
> A.) Does anyone have experience with returning Hitachi, Seagate or WD
> drives to the manufacturer?
>    Do they have manufacturer warranty at all?
>    How much/little trouble did you have with Hitachi, Seagate or WD?
>
> B.) Can anyone *prove* (to a reasonable degree) that drives from
> manufacturer H, M, S or WD is of better quality?
>    Has anyone seen a review that heat/shock/stress test drives?
>
> C.) Does good SATA cables exist?
>    Eg. cables that lock on to the drives, or backplanes which lock
> the entire disk in place?
>
>
> Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for answers (if any) :-).
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-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979