Opinions/Experience re: Maxtor Onetough II external drive?

[Chel van Gennip]

I still do not believe that the average "cooling" fan built into the
average housing is adequate.

I have four external drives sitting on just one of my workbenches
awaiting recovery. Each one of them has a slot for said fan - but not
one, single housing actually contains a fan. LaCie, Iomega, HP Media
(sealed unit all round - no ventilation) and some generic brand.

The subject is not if the average "cooling" fan built into the average
housing is adequate, this discussion is about the Maxtor Onetouch II.

May I remind you your previous post:

I get more Maxtor drives in for recovery than all other brands put
together. OneTouch drives a speciality.

In this post you only mention a lot of other drives.

I think in the cases you mention, not the units itself are the problem,
but the lack of free room around the units while operating is the problem.

Your business is "Data Recovery Experts", so your customers do not have
propper procedures to prevent data loss. With propper procedures the loss
of data can be prevented. Even when disks with removable diskpacks were
used, that have failure rates much higher than the current drives, data
loss was not a real problem. I am not so convinced your customers will
propperly handle the devices, as they have shown not to have propper
procedures against data loss.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

The disk has a power consumption of about 10W operating,

My Antex soldering iron is a puny 15 watts.
Would be interesting to see how much it drops in temperature when
connected to that case in just 4 (probably even insulated) points.

The housing is an all aluminium case with perfect heat conduction.

If you connect it to the whole body of the drive equally which is nearly impossible.

Not much, but the air has to be of significantly lower temperature to cause
a significant enough cooling effect that is equal to adding mass (heat storing
capacity) and/or surface (heat transfer capability).

Fantasy & marketing drivel.

Clearing confusing "actual" reliability of an "external" with
reliability projections (used as marketing ploy) of "internal" drives.
"Perfect heat conduction"?? Nothing is perfect. 60 deg? even 40 deg
is _way_ to hot over the long term for disks. And what about the ATA
bridge's tolerance of that temp?

(That's why Usenet is *filled* with bitch & moans about data corruption with external drives).

I must be in the wrong newsgroup then.

 

[Rod Speed]

Curious George wrote

It is. There are many clients (e.g. OEM's) that are using thouthands
of units of the same model. Wrong specifications, e.g. <1%
failure/year while failure rate is much higher, will cost them
monney, enough monney to get it back. I have seen wrong
specifications of components and or company has made serious claims
because of wrong specifications.

Shit happens, most obviously with the IBM 75GXP and the 60GXP
and the Fujitsu MPG. Its never going to be possible to produce
useful numbers with a brand new drive that hasnt gotten out into
the field yet. Only a fool is stupid enough to believe that what
numbers the manufacturer provides are any use in trying to
predict what life they will actually get out of a particular drive model.

The numbers are a complete wank in practice.

In spades with Maxtor's OneTouch drives.

 

[Rich Wood]

However, seems like I've read things in the not too distant past about large
drives having problems with longevity. I've also never used an external
drive, so am wondering about any other issues to be aware of.

I've already had two of the external Maxtor 160Gb drives go bad on me.
I foolishly bought another and have problems with the machine
recognizing the firewire drive. I had music on the new drive (backed
up on DVD) and have had to reformat the drive to have it recognized.

I wouldn't use these drives for any mission-critical uses. Your
chances of losing data are high.

Rich

 

[Curious George]

It is. There are many clients (e.g. OEM's) that are using thouthands of
units of the same model.

curious that in this response you now step away from first hand
experience with a sample size of "thousands"

Wrong specifications, e.g. <1% failure/year
while failure rate is much higher, will cost them monney, enough monney
to get it back. I have seen wrong specifications of components and or
company has made serious claims because of wrong specifications.

Get it back? Good luck. How is an OEM supposed to "get it back" when
their system integration is even more likely to cause the warranty
claims than the disk manufacturer's product? You know how the
finger-pointing game is played in this business.

Furthermore a disk manufacturer's specified reliability stats are not
a promise or guarantee of performance that is legally binding or even
readily provable. MTBF, for example, does not even include the entire
population of drives, only an extrapolation/guestimate about the
population of _good_ drives over time (infant deaths are removed from
the pot). There's no escaping that's what MTBF is. So that's another
way it's very easy for an OEM to have a bad experience and at the same
time a disk manufacturer have a valid claim that their MTBF numbers
are appropriate.

Yes OEM's, etc keep reliability data & they're not going to disclose
this valuable private information & how they collect it, which might
step on the toes of other valuable relationships, in order to sue
Maxtor or Seagate because their specs were "false advertizing" and
Dell, for example, had to process more warranty claims than they were
hoping for & didn't like that they had to meet their obligations to
their customers & take responsibility for the product/package they
sold them. IMHO that makes no sense. A problem would have to be a
hell of a lot bigger than we're talking about here for anything that
remotely resembles that to happen.


Would an OEM change relationships based on their compiled reliability
data? Sometimes. But not because there is disagreement about the
numbers - that's simply a fact of life. An OEM would be incompetent
and destined for failure if they took advertized reliability stats as
literal, gospel truth. Instead switches come because losses were
unacceptable and out of step with the competition or simply that
someone else has a better deal or better marketable product that add
greater value to their packages.

 

[Chel van Gennip]

curious that in this response you now step away from first hand
experience with a sample size of "thousands"

I just explained how the experience was build.

Get it back? Good luck. How is an OEM supposed to "get it back"

Financial compensation for the extra work etc. or total replacement by
other products that meet the original specifications.

 

[Curious George]

I just explained how the experience was build.

Pathetic really. You can't really think you're believed as having a
major hand in a mid or top tier OEM.

Financial compensation for the extra work etc.

And how is that achieved pray tell? Besides, the "extra work" is
already factored in to the sale price & the price of extended
warranties. & Unlike you OEM's know the difference between
"theoretical" & "actual MTBF" and understand why "service life" is
sometimes not specified or different than warranty.

OK maybe sometimes they'll grease the wheels a little if they're
fearful about a valuable relationship. But they can't anywhere near
make a significant refund towards an OEM's warranty claims. An OEM
has responsibilities & burdens on their systems and there are
shareholders that have to be answered to. OEM's also understand that
everyone occasionally makes a lemon - so how much hardball can they
really play? Where else are they going to go? All this is factored
into profit and operating margins, otherwise - like I said an OEM
would be incompetent and destined for failure.

Disk manufacturer's may acknowledge a problem model if there's a
bazooka to their head, but not that the "specs were wrong." More
typically they admit there were a batch that were "out of spec" due to
manufacturing or supply issues (or some similar line of BS) -
something temporary that can be reconciled for the next product. What
you're implying doesn't make any sense; it's is bad business. These
aren't bad businessmen.

or total replacement by
other products that meet the original specifications.

You mean "damage control" not "get it back"

 

[Bob]

Hi Rich
I've had very good experience for years with an external FireWire/USB
2.0 Combo Western Digital WDX2000BBRNN. I never saw a USB2.0 adapter,
at least not at the right price, until recently. Years of rock-solid
happy days with that WD external drive and the Firewire adapter (
VEN_80146 ) "NEC FireWarden OHCI (Orange Micro Orange Link FireWire
PCI". It says it is also Mac compatible. I did need help from MS to
get winME to attach a Sony VX1000 with it. My experience with MS
indicates PCI Firewire connections to other devices is very much
dependent on having the the right INF file(s?) or the registry changes
needed to hot swap these devices doesn't happen. As usual with
computers, "its my way or the highway". I am haveing some issues
getting the VX1000 attached on a new mini winME system. Feel free to
look in and advise as I'm at a standstill with a new? D-Link DFB A5.