hard drive woes

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----

> I really wonder if the quality HAS gone downhill. I
> Still have several drives that are WAAAAYYY beyond
> their usable lifetime. These are smaller drives
> 540mb-3.5gb, Fujitsu, Samsung, Western Digital,
> Seagate, Maxtor. All are running just fine. The only
> horror stories I seem to hear about are newer (less
> than 2 year old) drives that just went belly up. What
> gives??? Its just crazy if you ask me.

Quality problems seem to come in waves, but the manufacturers seem to learn
from each one.  Sometimes it's technology that doesn't perform as expected,
sometimes it's just slack in the Quality Control department.

There seem to be four failure modes:  

Fails within hours (Usually caught at the factory)
Fails within two years (Annoying for those of use at corporate sites)
Reaches an expected lifespan, then croaks (less than half?)
Keeps going, and going, and going, until you wonder how anybody ever found a
use for something that small and slow.