On Sat, 11 Feb 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
If you look at the MTBF [1] figures of "standard" drives against "enterprise" drives, you will see that standard drives are manufactured to lesser standards and expecting them to last as long as enterprise drives is just a dream.
Well the drive manufacturers SAY that there is a difference. There is apparently nothing illegal with down-playing the features of your cheaper product to increase sales of your more expensive product.
Consumer drives (standard ones) are not expected to operate 24/7, but you will certainly expect that with an enterprise drive.
I expect my consumer drives to run 24*7. I have two in my home server that have been running since 1TB was a big drive, one in my gateway system, three servers with RAID-1 arrays in various parts of Melbourne (one of which had a drive die about a year ago and then had the replacement die the same day), and five servers in Germany with 3TB SATA disks in RAID-1 arrays. That's 19 drives, 8 of which (4 of the German servers) are only a few months old, but the rest have all been running for years. I have a vague recollection that a previous German server had a SATA disk die about 3 years ago. So it's been 2 desktop drives lost out of 11 drives over the last 3+ years, or 3 drives if you count the replacement that lasted a couple of hours.
btw it completely astounds me when so much equipment is sold "cheap" from places like zazz.com.au and ozstock.com.au with LIMITED 3 month warranties..... if it is new equipment being sold in AU, then you are entitled to at least 12 months statutory warranty -- why are there exceptions? Why are batteries for mobiles and laptops only warranted for 6 months? Old stock that is sold at greatly reduced pricing (which reflects the fact that it is old equipment already) should be exempt from the standard statutory 12 month requirement, but I don't think it is.
Things that are expected to wear out don't have the same warranty protection. Batteries have a certain life expectancy in terms of charges and the amount to which they are charged and discharged. The Prius is designed to not fully charge or discharge it's batteries and this means that they can last a long time. Laptops are designed to fully use the available charge and this decreases the battery life. As for short warranties on hardware, if you buy refurbished stuff from GraysOnline.com then a 1 year warranty is standard. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/