Hi,
On 11/02/2012 1:10 PM, James Harper wrote:
"Enterprise" drives don't normally cost that much more, although looking at the prices right now they are quite a bit more expensive at the moment from at least one of our suppliers.
Drive pricing was severely effected by the Thailand floods.
There is enough price differential between standard and enterprise drives, but the standard ones come with lesser warranty -- I think it is better to choose enterprise ALWAYS, just due to the warranty period extension.
If the warranty is longer, then it should follow that the drive is more reliable and can be trusted more easily (aside from the "use" type settings).
On the subject of warranty, the laws in australia have changed for goods purchased since 1/1/2011. The manufactures warranty just represents the point where you can get your money back easily. The product must still function for a reasonable time after purchase and must be repaired or replaced if it fails within that time, although I think that responsibility falls to the party you purchased it off. The "reasonable time" bit isn't clearly defined, but if I bought a disk and it failed within 18 months I'd be contacting the place I'd bought it off, even if it only came with a 12 month warranty. No manufacturer is going to agree that their product isn't expected to last 3 years.
From http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1023610
"Is there a time limit on when you can use your rights? There are no specific rules about exactly how long a product or service should last. Even after a voluntary or manufacturer's warranty expires you may still be entitled to a repair, replacement or refund. This will depend on what you purchased and the nature of the problem." Disks are a bit tricky though... I'd be reluctant to return a $99 disk for repair/replacement if it was a standalone or part of a RAID1 and had my (or my customers) data easily accessible, even if the chances are it would just be sent for destruction anyway. I guess that's another advantage of RAID[56]. It's all out the window if you imported it direct from an overseas reseller of course, but that's a choice you make. OT but it's also worth noting that the phone situation is much more clearly defined. If you get a phone on a contract from a Telco, your phone is covered at least for the duration of the contract (eg if your phone breaks 18 months into a 24 month contract they have to repair or replace it). Something to keep in mind next time your telco tries to screw you over (as was the case when my mum bought a phone recently). James
On Sat, 11 Feb 2012, James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:
Disks are a bit tricky though... I'd be reluctant to return a $99 disk for repair/replacement if it was a standalone or part of a RAID1 and had my (or my customers) data easily accessible, even if the chances are it would just be sent for destruction anyway. I guess that's another advantage of RAID[56].
http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/02/06/reliability-raid/ If you send a drive in for warranty service then they will probably fix it and send it to someone else, see some discussion of this at the above URL. I don't know how good they are about wiping the data before sending the drive out. Rumor has it that organisations which are serious about secrecy will just return the top plate of the drive for warranty claims and melt the rest of the drive. Apparently if you buy enough drives the manufacturer will accept that deal. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Saturday 11 February 2012 16:19:06 Russell Coker wrote:
Rumor has it that organisations which are serious about secrecy will just return the top plate of the drive for warranty claims and melt the rest of the drive.
Large vendors I've spoken to say those sort of people just buy new drives as replacements as they cannot release the failed drive; warrany never comes into it. -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP
On Saturday 11 February 2012 16:19:06 Russell Coker wrote:
Rumor has it that organisations which are serious about secrecy will just return the top plate of the drive for warranty claims and melt the rest of the drive.
Large vendors I've spoken to say those sort of people just buy new drives as replacements as they cannot release the failed drive; warrany never comes into it.
Why do you think the manufacturer requires the failed drive back in these cases? It is a perfectly acceptable arrangement for the manufacturer to trust a large organisation to destroy their own drive and to not require it back again. Even asking for the top cover or other proof is just making more trouble than it's worth. James
On Sunday 12 February 2012 17:54:06 James Harper wrote:
Why do you think the manufacturer requires the failed drive back in these cases?
Well it's not the manufacturer but the vendor who sells the system with the disks in that won't do warranty replacement without the failed drive. My source is a support engineer for such a vendor who deals with such customers, the customers just buy new drives and destroy the old ones. No warranty replacement. cheers, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP
Hi, Gee, the list is slow to pass on the messages.... !!!!!! I've been waiting to reply to the list copy of James' message on list. On 11/02/2012 3:57 PM, James Harper wrote:
On the subject of warranty, the laws in australia have changed for goods purchased since 1/1/2011. The manufactures warranty just represents the point where you can get your money back easily. The product must still function for a reasonable time after purchase and must be repaired or replaced if it fails within that time, although I think that responsibility falls to the party you purchased it off. The "reasonable time" bit isn't clearly defined, but if I bought a disk and it failed within 18 months I'd be contacting the place I'd bought it off, even if it only came with a 12 month warranty. No manufacturer is going to agree that their product isn't expected to last 3 years.
From http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1023610
I believe that the laws have NOT changed, those laws were part of the Trade Practices Act quite some time ago..... the new ACCC notes / rulings makes people _think_ that the laws have changed. All of this was already covered by TPA. The trouble with many things is that they are made to be replaced, and far too frequently as well. Some things last, others do not. We all know that with HDDs there are all sorts of things that can go wrong and some of those are problems due to manufacturing faults, others are to do with the environment in which they are used and HOW they are used. 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. Consumer drives (standard ones) are not expected to operate 24/7, but you will certainly expect that with an enterprise drive. Standard drives might not be operated in ideal conditions, but there is a fair expectation that enterprise drives which are required to operate 24/7 should be doing so in a suitable environment... Anyway, the main points are: 1. Warranty doesn't necessarily dictate reasonable "life"; 2. Longer warranties indicate better specified equipment; [which will presumably have a longer real serviceable life] 3. The ACCC points are questionable and completely unnecessary in the whole scheme of things, the TP Act protects us from reasonable life of goods in service. 4. If you want a drive to last, choose an enterprise one and treat it nice by operating it in a suitable environment. If it fails before a "reasonable" lifetime and you have done the right thing, then the drive will most likely fail during the actual warranty period and anything the ACCC or the TP Act says won't matter. If it fails after the end of the warranty period, then simply buy a new one and be done with it. Also, many commercial organizations will religiously replace older hardware at or before warranty expiration; with computers, this can be an advantage for all sorts of reasons -- including that tech has improved significantly and quite often the price has come down or the speed / capacity and overall performance has significantly been improved upon. Using old drives until they fail is more likely to cause more grief than it is worth; of course, having suitable backups and RAID implementation lessens the risk somewhat but you don't benefit from the improved newer tech. 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. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures -- Kind Regards AndrewM Andrew McGlashan Broadband Solutions now including VoIP Current Land Line No: 03 9012 2102 Mobile: 04 2574 1827 Fax: 03 9012 2178 National No: 1300 85 3804 Affinity Vision Australia Pty Ltd http://www.affinityvision.com.au http://adsl2choice.net.au In Case of Emergency -- http://www.affinityvision.com.au/ice.html
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/
Hi, On 12/02/2012 12:02 AM, Russell Coker wrote:
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.
True.
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.
I expect that many IT people run consumer grade drives 24/7, but most "ordinary" persons / families run machines for much shorter periods of run time.
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.
That's not bad. Besides all this standard vs enterprise, RAID is literally "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks" after all... and sure, many of us here would use RAID1 at least, lots of "ordinary" folk only have their data on ONE HDD, internal or external -- they don't do backups like they should and mirroring isn't in their IT vocabulary, but rather in their bathroom. ;-)
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.
I understand that some products are more prone to fail sooner than other types of products, but if you are entitled to a 12 month statutory warranty on ANYTHING that is new, then why not batteries as well? And there is plenty of non-refurbished product selling with 3 month warranty as well, it makes a mockery of the statutory 12 month requirement.
As for short warranties on hardware, if you buy refurbished stuff from GraysOnline.com then a 1 year warranty is standard.
Okay, that is good to know. Cheers -- Kind Regards AndrewM Andrew McGlashan Broadband Solutions now including VoIP Current Land Line No: 03 9012 2102 Mobile: 04 2574 1827 Fax: 03 9012 2178 National No: 1300 85 3804 Affinity Vision Australia Pty Ltd http://www.affinityvision.com.au http://adsl2choice.net.au In Case of Emergency -- http://www.affinityvision.com.au/ice.html
On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
I expect that many IT people run consumer grade drives 24/7, but most "ordinary" persons / families run machines for much shorter periods of run time.
You would be surprised at the number of people who run computers 24*7 nowadays. It was affordable ADSL and cable net access that caused this. When it is no extra cost to be online 24*7 then it's easist to just leave the machine checking mail 24*7. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Hi, On 12/02/2012 9:32 AM, Russell Coker wrote:
You would be surprised at the number of people who run computers 24*7 nowadays. It was affordable ADSL and cable net access that caused this. When it is no extra cost to be online 24*7 then it's easist to just leave the machine checking mail 24*7.
The main driver for many people running their machines 24/7 seems to be the illegal download of movies and TV shows. Many more will turn off their machines simply to save on power usage costs than those that leave them on. You might be surprised how little time some machines run and it wouldn't surprise me if the average in many, if not most homes is lower than 4 hours per day of usage for the general population. Cheers AndrewM
On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
The main driver for many people running their machines 24/7 seems to be the illegal download of movies and TV shows.
When I worked for a Dutch ISP about 10 years ago we noticed a significant number of the ADSL customers leaving their machines on 24*7. At one stage we just assumed that every ADSL customer would be checking POP/IMAP mail all the time because it was a near enough approximation for the busy periods. At that stage speeds such as 128/64 and 512/128 were quite common, downloading TV shows wouldn't have been a good option at such speeds, even if there were sites providing such files.
Many more will turn off their machines simply to save on power usage costs than those that leave them on. You might be surprised how little time some machines run and it wouldn't surprise me if the average in many, if not most homes is lower than 4 hours per day of usage for the general population.
I've just checked the logs for a medium size mail server I run. Yesterday 7.6% of the users checked their mail at least once every hour FROM THE SAME IP ADDRESS for 24 hours. That excluded mobile phones and services like Google Apps (which get different IP addresses). That would also possibly exclude some cable/ADSL customers who are on dynamic IP addresses. Another 2.3% of users checked their mail on 20-23 hours of the day, and another 15% checked their mail on 10-19 hours of the day. A total of 25% of the users checked their mail for more than 10 hours. Now if a computer is online 24 hours a day that doesn't mean that mail will be checked at least once per hour. Some people may have their MUA set with a >60 minute polling time (some people just like to poll manually). Some people just don't have their MUA running all the time. Some people have multi-user computers and log out regularly, for example the log entries for my parents computer will reveal that my mother is online for a while and my father is online for a while. The switch user functionality that was introduced to KDE and GNOME recently (a few years ago) is still rather new, most of my relatives haven't learned to deal with it yet. Note that this is NOT 25% of users who connected on that day doing so for 10 hours or more. This is 25% of the entire user-base. Presumably some of the users are on holiday and have everything shut down. grep perdition.*Auth.*ok mail.log.1|grep -v 127.0.0.1|sed -e s/:..:..\ $HOSTNAME.*Auth:./,/ -e s/:.*authentication_id=\"/,/ -e s/..server=.*$// -e s/^Feb....// | tr [A-Z] [a-z]|grep -v $WEBMAIL|awk -F, '{print $3,$2,$1}'|sort -u |sed -e s/\ ..$//|uniq -c > /tmp/count.txt I used the above command to get a count of users repeatedly using the same IP address to connect via POP and IMAP. $HOSTNAME is the name of the system as used for syslog and $WEBMAIL is the IP address of the webmail server. Then I could just grep the count.txt file to find the number of users who logged in for X hours per day. Thanks to Hannah for the awk advice that helped me get this done. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 12:02:21AM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
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
the few desktop drives that we have tried in the server room have performed badly. they couldn't handle the vibration from other nearby disks or fans - a large percentage of them ran at highly erratic speeds and some barely worked at all. they were useless. we took them out. OTOH enterprise drives generally aren't rated for lots of stops and starts that are typically needed in a home machine. I'm not sure how much of the difference is in manufacturing standards and how much is in firmware, but there is a difference. our many sata disks are all "enterprise sata" and performance there hasn't been as predictable as the +/- 0.5 MB/s our SAS/FC disks achieve, but hasn't been bad. failure rates are pretty high with the "enterprise sata", but that's why they're in raids. most annoying is that (at least with this particular sata disk model and fw) they die in many many different ways - some of which appear to be 1/2 working but aren't really. it took a lot of work to get the SAS drivers fixed enough to handle these cases.
apparently nothing illegal with down-playing the features of your cheaper product to increase sales of your more expensive product.
assuming competition between disk vendors for the high volume consumer market, I think downplaying features is unlikely.
Things that are expected to wear out don't have the same warranty protection.
pretty sure all hard disks are designed to die at warranty + 1 day. cheers, robin
On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Robin Humble <robin.humble@anu.edu.au> wrote:
the few desktop drives that we have tried in the server room have performed badly. they couldn't handle the vibration from other nearby disks or fans - a large percentage of them ran at highly erratic speeds and some barely worked at all. they were useless. we took them out.
Buying "enterprise" disks won't save you from such vibration issues as one company I once worked for found out the hard way.
OTOH enterprise drives generally aren't rated for lots of stops and starts that are typically needed in a home machine.
My observation is that the problem with "enterprise" drives is heat dissipation. Put a power hungry (and heat producing) drive in a confined space with little ventilation and it probably won't last long. Some years ago one of my clients decided that SCSI was good and got SCSI drives for all their workstations against my advice. When they had a bunch of drive failures due to hot summer nights (A/C turned off at night but workstations running 24*7) they converted to IDE and had much greater reliability.
I'm not sure how much of the difference is in manufacturing standards and how much is in firmware, but there is a difference.
There are some significant hardware differences such as the rotational speed that affect all aspects of the design.
apparently nothing illegal with down-playing the features of your cheaper product to increase sales of your more expensive product.
assuming competition between disk vendors for the high volume consumer market, I think downplaying features is unlikely.
You are assuming that people who buy the cheapest available SATA disks read the specs about the MTBF. I think that's a bad assumption.
Things that are expected to wear out don't have the same warranty protection.
pretty sure all hard disks are designed to die at warranty + 1 day.
I'm pretty sure that they aren't. Every disk that gets returned probably wipes out the profit margin of a few others. They would have to design them to work for a long time past their warranty to keep the number of drives that fail early below an acceptable limit. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On 11/02/2012 3:57 PM, James Harper wrote:
On the subject of warranty, the laws in australia have changed for goods purchased since 1/1/2011. The manufactures warranty just represents the point where you can get your money back easily. The product must still function for a reasonable time after purchase and must be repaired or replaced if it fails within that time, although I think that responsibility falls to the party you purchased it off. The "reasonable time" bit isn't clearly defined, but if I bought a disk and it failed within 18 months I'd be contacting the place I'd bought it off, even if it only came with a 12 month warranty. No manufacturer is going to agree that their product isn't expected to last 3 years.
From http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1023610
I believe that the laws have NOT changed, those laws were part of the Trade Practices Act quite some time ago..... the new ACCC notes / rulings makes people _think_ that the laws have changed. All of this was already covered by TPA.
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
The trouble with many things is that they are made to be replaced, and far too frequently as well. Some things last, others do not.
We all know that with HDDs there are all sorts of things that can go wrong and some of those are problems due to manufacturing faults, others are to do with the environment in which they are used and HOW they are used.
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.
I bet no manufacturer would put in writing that "it's not reasonable to expect this drive to last 3 years of 24/7 operation", and if they don't put it in writing I think a warranty claim within that time is fair game (and if they did put it in writing, it's front page Slashdot material :) James
Hi, On 12/02/2012 10:03 AM, James Harper wrote:
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
I don't disagree, but it makes it much less likely that retailers can support such claims without manufacturer support. Lots of commodity items only have a very, very small markup and any returns, even during warranty periods, wipe out any margin made on the original sale. Extending the obligations beyond manufacture warranty period on to retailers and there is almost certainly going to be losses on too many sales. What this will mean is that we'll all have to pay much more for this commodity hardware as the number of sellers will diminish significantly and competition will fail to deliver lower pricing -- each retailer *must* sell at a premium to cover this obligation. I guess more and more buyers will buy from the US and import the goods themselves rather than pay such inflated prices due to these conditions. Myself, well I have access to "wholesale" pricing from a number of avenues, but can often find retail pricing that is lower than such wholesale pricing, sometimes much, much lower! Again, that makes it impossible to be a retailer of such items. If you sell such items at a loss, [which is now very likely] then you need to make up monies in other ways to subsidize the sale. NB: I've bcc-ed you James, hoping that you get a proper list copy of the email -- please do the same with any replies you make... ditto for replies from others please. -- Kind Regards AndrewM
On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
On 12/02/2012 10:03 AM, James Harper wrote:
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
I don't disagree, but it makes it much less likely that retailers can support such claims without manufacturer support. Lots of commodity items only have a very, very small markup and any returns, even during warranty periods, wipe out any margin made on the original sale. Extending the obligations beyond manufacture warranty period on to retailers and there is almost certainly going to be losses on too many sales.
So retailers just have to increase the prices a bit, and maybe think twice about selling gear that has little warranty support from the supplyer. One of the things about the warranty is that it sends a signal to the customer about what the manufacturer thinks of the quality of the goods. If the manufacturer doesn't think it will last then maybe it's not worth buying or retailing.
What this will mean is that we'll all have to pay much more for this commodity hardware as the number of sellers will diminish significantly and competition will fail to deliver lower pricing -- each retailer *must* sell at a premium to cover this obligation. I guess more and more buyers will buy from the US and import the goods themselves rather than pay such inflated prices due to these conditions.
If the hardware in question is so unreliable that paying for warranty replacements would force the prices up a lot then it's probably better for the customer to pay more and get the warranty which they are likely to need. Also as the price goes up it makes other products more appealing, so maybe a better quality product will become cheaper when the cost of replacing rubbish products is taken into account. If the rubbish products include things which can cause data loss then forcing them from the market is a service.
Myself, well I have access to "wholesale" pricing from a number of avenues, but can often find retail pricing that is lower than such wholesale pricing, sometimes much, much lower! Again, that makes it impossible to be a retailer of such items.
No, that makes it impossible to be a retailer unless you have the relationship with the vendor that gives you the good prices. You then have to ask why the vendor is being an ass and giving such unfair advantage to your competitors. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
I know what the vendors say, but for simple RAID1 setups I've actually found higher end desktop hard drives + Linux Software RAID ridiculously more reliable (& fast/faster) than enterprise drives with a hardware RAID card - this is with experience with a few hundred small business servers over the last 8 years or so. Yes, I know the vendors say you shouldn't run these 24/7, and I almost always opt for the "enterprise" solution in non-RAID1 environments (or when running Windows / hypervisors), but my failure rate with desktop drives running in RAID1 is tiny as hell (<1%). I can't even remember the last time a desktop drive failed on me. Replacing enterprise drives in higher end servers seems a considerably more common thing I end up doing. The biggest thing that tends to kill drives, no matter what "grade" they are, is heat - a fan covering a larger RAID5/6/10 array packs up and it's all over. Regarding enterprise drives, as far as I'm aware most are mechanically identical to their desktop counterparts. I can understand there are firmware optimizations which make them more suitable for typical access patterns a server will perform, and therefore a better choice in high load environments, but if desktop drives were manufactured to be intentionally less reliable than we'd be seeing a hell of a lot more failures with desktop drives. People leaving their desktops on 24/7 is very common, and don't forget how much a typical spyware/virus-ridden Windows machine will thrash the hard drive. R ----- Original Message ----- On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
On 12/02/2012 10:03 AM, James Harper wrote:
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
I don't disagree, but it makes it much less likely that retailers can support such claims without manufacturer support. Lots of commodity items only have a very, very small markup and any returns, even during warranty periods, wipe out any margin made on the original sale. Extending the obligations beyond manufacture warranty period on to retailers and there is almost certainly going to be losses on too many sales.
So retailers just have to increase the prices a bit, and maybe think twice about selling gear that has little warranty support from the supplyer. One of the things about the warranty is that it sends a signal to the customer about what the manufacturer thinks of the quality of the goods. If the manufacturer doesn't think it will last then maybe it's not worth buying or retailing.
What this will mean is that we'll all have to pay much more for this commodity hardware as the number of sellers will diminish significantly and competition will fail to deliver lower pricing -- each retailer *must* sell at a premium to cover this obligation. I guess more and more buyers will buy from the US and import the goods themselves rather than pay such inflated prices due to these conditions.
If the hardware in question is so unreliable that paying for warranty replacements would force the prices up a lot then it's probably better for the customer to pay more and get the warranty which they are likely to need. Also as the price goes up it makes other products more appealing, so maybe a better quality product will become cheaper when the cost of replacing rubbish products is taken into account. If the rubbish products include things which can cause data loss then forcing them from the market is a service.
Myself, well I have access to "wholesale" pricing from a number of avenues, but can often find retail pricing that is lower than such wholesale pricing, sometimes much, much lower! Again, that makes it impossible to be a retailer of such items.
No, that makes it impossible to be a retailer unless you have the relationship with the vendor that gives you the good prices. You then have to ask why the vendor is being an ass and giving such unfair advantage to your competitors. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
On 12/02/2012 10:03 AM, James Harper wrote:
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
I don't disagree, but it makes it much less likely that retailers can support such claims without manufacturer support. Lots of commodity items only have a very, very small markup and any returns, even during warranty periods, wipe out any margin made on the original sale. Extending the obligations beyond manufacture warranty period on to retailers and there is almost certainly going to be losses on too many sales.
So retailers just have to increase the prices a bit, and maybe think twice about selling gear that has little warranty support from the supplyer. One of the things about the warranty is that it sends a signal to the customer about what the manufacturer thinks of the quality of the goods. If the manufacturer doesn't think it will last then maybe it's not worth buying or retailing.
I couldn't have said it better Russell. What we had was a race to the bottom and something needed to be done. It remains to be seen whether this new world order will actually change that of course, but I think it's definitely a move in the right direction. James
On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 06:55:59AM +0000, James Harper wrote:
What we had was a race to the bottom and something needed to be done.
and one of the worst things about a race to the bottom is the affect it has on quality over the entire market, especially when the average purchaser has no idea how to reliably distinguish between good and bad products. this leads to what is known as a Lemon Market[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons in short, the bad drives out the good. craig ps: Information Asymmetry[2] is also why supermarkets, petrol stations etc were so vehemently against the proposed govt price monitoring web sites a few years back. a significant part of their profits comes from exploiting their customers' ignorance. Anything that informs the customer will undermine their profits. I suspect it's also a big part of the reason why the supermarkets' online shopping sites often have very different prices to the prices in the shops. partly to prevent shoppers from comparison shopping via the web, and partly to exploit the online shoppers' ignorance of the actual price in the local shop. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:13:08PM +1100, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
I believe that the laws have NOT changed, those laws were part of the Trade Practices Act quite some time ago..... the new ACCC notes / rulings makes people _think_ that the laws have changed. All of this was already covered by TPA.
yep. it was just a clarification in response to retailers deceiving customers and trying to avoid their obligations. you say that the ACCC's points were "completely unnecessary". Incorrect. They were necessary because there were numerous repeat offenders evading their legal obligations.
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?
because many retailers, both online and offline, have never had any qualms about deceiving their customers about their statutory rights, or taking advantage of their customers' ignorance of the law, or putting obstacles in the way of customers' ability to exercise their rights (e.g. by making warranty claims such a PITA - lying, delaying, making unreasonable conditions - that most customers give up). this is why, for example, MSY were recently (in the last year or so) fined and required to display prominent notices in their shops that they, as the retailer, are responsible for warranty claims, they can't just fob the customer off and direct them to the manufacturer or the importer. in this country, that's illegal. if you buy something from a shop, that shop is where you take it back for warranty issues - they sold it, they are responsible for dealing with any problems. and in many cases, you have the legal right to insist on a refund or replacement on the spot, regardless of what the shop's policy is. one important thing that people need to remember is that company policies do not and can not override the law.
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.
second-hand stock IS treated differently or exempted from statutory warranties. second-hand items are generally sold as-is, unless a particular warranty is offered by the seller. old but new & unused stock is treated the same as other new stock. this is as it should be. it's still new, and it's irrelevant that it happens to be a superceded model. you seem to be missing the point of consumer protection laws and trade practices legislation. their purpose, funnily enough, is to protect consumers from being ripped off and to regulate what businesses are allowed to get away with. this is a good thing. and I'm glad I live in a country with reasonably good (but far from perfect) consumer protection laws, rather than a country like the US where "caveat emptor" is considered to be an admirable business model rather than a warning against scumbags. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #250: Program load too heavy for processor to lift.
participants (7)
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Andrew McGlashan -
Chris Samuel -
Craig Sanders -
James Harper -
Robin Humble -
Russell Coker -
Ryan Verner