[Discuss] Tired of unreliable external drives... recommendations?

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey)]

> From: Bill Bogstad [mailto:bogstad at pobox.com]
> 
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Edward Ned Harvey <blu at nedharvey.com>
> wrote:
> >...
> > As an IT guy and Computer Engineer, and EE, working for CS/EE / chip
> > companies, I encourage companies to stick with big name brands where
> they've
> > sold millions of the same drive under warranty (such as ... buy your
Dell
> > and Apple and Oracle branded drives rather than OTS
> > seagate/westerndigital/etc drives.)  But it's all just a superstition
and a
> > balance of probabilities, and in fact, buying the supported name branded
> > drives does indeed cost more per drive.
> 
> None of the companies you recommend make their own disk drives.   In
> fact, they all resell drives from the companies that you don't
> recommend.   Now, I can remember a time when Sun (for example) had
> particular firmware revisions that they used for drives they resold.
> This would in fact make them different from the same model disk drive
> that I can purchase from NewEgg, etc.   Can you clarify what
> differences you believe still exist between branded and OTS drives
> when we are talking about the exact same model?  

For one, if you get a support contract on your server with
dell-oracle-whatever branded hard drives, then they become responsible for
managing the supply chain for replacement drives.  Three years later, when
model X disk drive isn't available from newegg anymore, you can still get
your replacement from dell etc, assuming you bought the dell etc up front.

For two, I formerly worked as a computer engineer for Compaq qualification.
Here's a summary of life in that job:  They hired me and a bunch of other
people into the qualification team for a product that didn't exist yet.  Our
job was to keep busy until the group 0 build was released to us...  And then
test the hell out of it as fast as possible.  It's guaranteed we'll discover
bugs, and management has a definition of "kit stopping" bugs.  It's pretty
simple, as long as the OS is able to boot and it's not a safety hazard, then
it's not a kit stopping bug.  (Both in the software and the hardware.)  (And
firmware.)