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Re: [OM] Seeking Hard Drive Advice

Subject: Re: [OM] Seeking Hard Drive Advice
From: "C.H.Ling" <ch_photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 16:04:55 +0800
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Moose" <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>

>  On 7/4/2010 12:29 AM, C.H.Ling wrote:
>> If you representing the typical consumer than the world of quality has 
>> ended, everyone just find the cheapest product to buy and rely on 
>> warranty to cover his purchase and think it is the right way.
>
> I only wrote about a specific product, Hard Drives. I don't use the same 
> principle for everything. It depends on the
> nature of the product. My late brother, who ended up as a free lance 
> designer of portable computers, was both MUCH more
> knowledgeable about digital electronics than I and better at math and 
> statistics.
>
> He first gave me this idea when he did some analysis of auto frequency of 
> repair data that Consumer Reports magazine
> collects and publishes. He proved to his own satisfaction, and he was 
> picky about such things, that choosing a car based
> on that data did nothing significant to increase one's chance of getting a 
> car that would require fewer repairs than
> another brand/model.
>

I don't know about car but I do heard some US brands need more attention 
than the Japaness one.

> The problem occurs, and this is true, only when frequency of 
> failure/repair and frequency of purchase are quite low . If
> I were buying HDs for a server farm, my approach would be different.
>

HD is cheap, I don't think it is worth to conisder something less, I will 
buy the one with better reputation, the cost different is less than 10% or 
$10. I had more than 4 hard disk failures in last 20 years, it caused lots 
of trouble. Even there is back up I have to re-install the OS and all 
software, very time consuming.

>> Fortunately most people still buy according to the reputation of the 
>> manufacturer if they want good
>> quality product. Of couse it doesn't count many buy according to fashion, 
>> look and new features....
>
> Recently, I decided to buy a new toaster oven, to replace one over 30 
> years old. I read reviews, both by "pros" on web
> review sites and by individual users. I spent a lot of time on it, and am 
> both delighted with the performance so far and
> pretty confident it will last a long time.
>
> That's a product where the basic technology changes very slowly and most 
> model changes are essentially marketing driven
> and mostly or completely cosmetic. For example, I bought exactly the same 
> product, except for a top/side cover that's
> painted, instead of stainless steel, from a discount chain, rather than a 
> higher end retailer.
>

For toaster oven or low cost electrical appliance we just buy the good 
looking one (the one my wife like) unless I need a special feature others 
don't have, in case it failed replacement cost is low (cost including effort 
and money). For hard disk I want to reduce the risk to minimum.

>> You are TOTALLY wrong if you think the manufacturer have not idea on the 
>> life time of a product until there are many thousands in service.
>
> I must respectfully disagree. I'm sure you are right for most 
> manufacturers, most of the time. Nevertheless, Toyota,
> which had he best record and reputation for reliability for many years, 
> has recently had two major recalls for
> significant problems, and looks like it will have a third shortly, for 
> stalling engines in Lexuses. I wouldn't be
> surprised if it costs them $Billions.

I had think about this case too and expected you might put it up, this is a 
special case, I'm talking about the general reliability. I know this cause 
Toyota lots of money but this is just one single case.

>
> I'm pretty sure they thought their parts and systems were safe and 
> reliable both in design and after prototype testing.
> Unfortunately, it wasn't true. The world simply isn't entirely 
> controllable.
>

Quality is not 100%, so there is quality level, we can't say it is not 
ENTIRELY controllable then there is no different between A and B. Even both 
have chance of failure but I sure prefer the one with lower percentage of 
field failure report.

>> A reasonable good manufacturer knows very well each component they used, 
>> such as the life time of the capacitor on their product, not only the 
>> well known short life electrolyte cap. even the high quality film cap 
>> will die just in a few years in the power circuit, it die with cap. value 
>> decrease and in the
>> worse cases even short circuit.
>>
>> Failure cames in three ways: [snip excellent descriptions]
>
> I don't know what kind of lighting manufacturer you worked for. Most 
> lighting manufacture is based on very old, well
> known technology, as far as I know. If I buy a new ballast for the fixture 
> in my basement, I'll bet it is very little
> different, if at all, from the 20+ year old one it replaces. The 
> principles you list above apply very well there.
>

The factory I worked for is making electronic ballast, most product are 
using very old technolgy (ok, there are also high-end computer controlled 
ballast) but still the design of each product change every one to three 
years (mainly for cost reduction) so the design is pushing to the limit. 
Very critical components are used such as  1% tol. metal film resistors and 
2-5% very low loss film capacitors. The selection of component is very 
critical and much more critical than the one using on computer. The large 
among of changes require a very well controlled quality system.

> In other fields, new designs must be made and tried all the time, perhaps 
> several times a year. HDs recently went
> through a big change, to vertical magnetic domain recording techniques, to 
> get up to and over 1TB in 3.5" drives. some
> of the earlier ones had more troubles than the older designs. Now they 
> seem to be pretty stable.
>

The HD failures I have seen are mainly electromechanical, I think it didn't 
involve recording techniques.

> I don't know how carefully you read my original post. I suggested buying 
> one step below the latest designs - for exactly
> those reasons. To quote Chuck on the same subject:
> ........
>
> As Chuck and I suggest, when I last bought HDs, i went with 1 TB when 1.5 
> TB ones had been on the market for a few
> months, and apparently were working.
>

I'm doing the same but the two Hitachi HD's (a 80GB and a 250GB) I had 
failure were not new to the market when I purchased them, not for waiting it 
to settle on the quality but mainly for the price.

>> In real life every company could do differently and concentrated on 
>> different areas. Cost reduction pressure is high and changing to a 
>> smaller supplier with less overhead/cost is a common way, this always 
>> cause problem. So if you just looking for the cheapest product you will 
>> end up with more
>> trouble.
>
> As I said above, I think that depends on the product and the market.
>

If talking about electronic products (toaster oven not counted :-)), I don't 
think there is big different.

C.H.Ling

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