On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 01:40:41AM -0700, Eric T. wrote: > > It turned out I had a bad, brand new Western Digital 160 Gbyte ATA100 hard > drive! > > In all my years of exposer to computers (since 1976) I have never seen a > bas Western Digital disk. At least not a new bad disk!
It's called "the bathtub curve", from the rate of failures for electronics (as well as a number of other manufactured products) - it looks like a cross-section of a bathtub when plotted. High risk of failure at first (manufacturing defects, catastrophic material failures, etc.), a low risk for a long period after that, and a sharply increasing risk as components come up on their end of useful life. In my experience, hard drives either fail in the first week or so, live for at least five years if they survive the initial "break-in" period, and break down catastrophically when they break down at all (the ECC circuitry masks all but catastrophic failures. I wish it generated some kind of a warning when it has to activate progressively more often...) I won't trust a drive until it's been installed for at least a week and a half. But I do agree: IBM, WD, and Quantum drives tend to be pretty darn reliable overall. Seagates, on the other hand, have always given me trouble - starting from the very first ones they ever made. -- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
