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Slashback: Drives, Errors, Copyright
Spin control for some IBM drives? If you are one ofthe people who have the same results with IBM 75GXP hard drives that Sean Kelly did when he posed a recent Ask Slashdot, you may be interested in this report from legLess, who writes: "Pair Networks is swapping out every IBM 75GXP hard drive they have "[b]ased on an amazingly high failure rate." Pair is a big host: 114,000 sites all running on FreeBSD 4.1.1, including cdrom.com and Tom's Hardware. "We currently use and recommend Maxtor drives" they say. Big black eye for IBM."
GNU isn't Linux, either. Amid the stream of recent and upcoming software releases (Suse 7.3, Red Hat 7.2, Qt 3.0), it's sometimes easy for projects with smaller followings or more esoteric goals to get lost. BorrisYeltsin writes: "The Debian HURD iso images are now available from your local ftp.gnu.org mirror. There are 3 iso's available, so get downloading now!" (And read through the recent months' on the HURD Kernel Cousin too.)
Update: 10/16 14:20 GMT by T : Please note that the GNU Project maintains a list of ftp mirrors -- look for one local to you for best results all around :)
Placing warning signs along the road to consumerism brigc writes: "Good interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education with Jessica Litman about changes in the copyright arena since the publication of her book.
For those who were asleep, Litman's book 'Digital Copyright' does a good job of discussing why the copyright process got handed over to the industry and Congress has failed to protect the rights of the public."
Litman's book got a rave review from Michael a few months back; I suggest you check it out, and better yet ask you local library to put it up on display. Libraries have a strong vested interest in not ceding all control to copyright holders forever and ever amen.
It might pay to have a big fat mouth and ask for a refund on defective merchandise, too. anonicon writes: "Here's a heads up to the web site I'm running at http://www.fatchucks.com. I've started both a Corrupt CDs list for people who wish to report 'copy-protected' CDs or find out which ones they are, and an Indie Rec for people who want to recommend independent artists to the public. Thank you."
From Tim Baker of Sunrise Records during MusicNotes @ 6 on my local radio station CHTZ-FM, best as I can remember the quote:
"You know the Panasonic or Yamaha CD burners you want to get this Christmas? Well, I've got news for you - save your money. After Christmas all new releases will be encoded and you won't be able to burn your own - and it's about time"
This is really paraphrased, but I have the gist of the quotation. I guess our fair use rights are supposedly forfeited because of the evil Napster. I wish these people would realise it's the price of a CD that was driving the Napster thing, not a willingness to steal. I alomst feel sorry for the record stores, though, since they take orders from the RIAA cabal.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
IBM drives are on the whole very good. Yes the 75GXPs are crap. On the other hand the 40GXPs and 60GXPs are some of the best consumer level drives on the market right now. If you're trying to avoid a faulty drive don't go to a slightly less faulty alternative like Maxtor (I have seen too many Maxtors (of varying generations) fail, I will never trust them again) rather than one of the products that gave IBM their previous reputation for reliability.
P.S. No I don't work for or are in any way affiliated with IBM. I'm just a sysadmin thats run a lot of hardware into the ground over the years, and am a happy owner of a 60GXP.
Most likely price. Its the same reason that google.com is using IDE drives, price per MB. The tradeoff is a small loss in read/write speeds on the disks but if you supplement your savings and buy a few more servers to server out your static pages your in the lead. I bet you though that any of their databases are on a SCSI array with some form of RAID. But for bang for buck IDE is a very good solution. The compaq DL320 which is marketed as a enterprise webserver comes with a standard ide interface. The SCSI is an option on this box.
The DTLA is one of the affected drives, the IC35L040 is one of the new 60GXPs, I've heard mixed reports on them, but so far they don't appear to be as bad as the 75GXPs. Also, you have command tagged queueing turned on, for some reason this seems to reduce the failure rate (at least on our local machines; we used to get these failures every couple of months on the drives, but we havn't seen it since turning on CTQ).
I read the internet for the articles.
Don't switch too fast. IBM's other drive lines are still some of the best in the business, including 60GXP drives of similar capacities.
Meanwhile, Maxtor's drive failure rate in my experience is nothing wonderful, and while IBM will switch every one of your IBM drives that fails quickly and without complaint, Maxtor is *much* harder to work with when something fails, especially if it fails repeatedly.
One or two unreliable products backed by incredible service may be better (especially for the little guy) than a slightly less unreliable product with problematic service. Just my experience.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
IBM drives have always treated me really well in the past (and when I did have a problem I was impressed by their replacement policy and speed) so I unhesitatingly bought two 76.8 gig 75gxps a few months ago... now we have all this nonsense coming out... Do I just keep good backups and wait for the failure or what? I'm way past the 30 days on the drives...
I must burn in hell, suffer and pay for my sins
But Gods the one who's losing, Satan always wins!
You'd be right to bring a class-action suit, except that IBM is fulfilling their warranty in a speedy fashion.
The notion of a good being saleable for the purpose it was intended isn't separate from the warranty that's provided on the condition that the item fails before it's life expectancy.
Now, if IBM had failed to honor the warranty, and the alleged large number of drives had failed, then there'd be room for legal action. EXCEPT, IBM has acted honorably.
I'm still not a lawyer.
The l4-hurd mailing list has been talking about porting the HURD to a "virtual kernel" and creating a virtual kernel layer for the L4 microkernel, to minimize all of the retooling that has to been done in the future when things move past current microkernel thinking.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
My company pumps out quite a few systems per month, and we have been using Seagate HD's for the past two years UNTIL now. For some reason for a period of 2 months we were getting back almost 2 in 3 of the Seagate 20Gig 5400rpm drives (cant remember model number) in our systems. That lasted for two months, until changed to Fujitsu.
:( But none of the other Seagate drives has any similar problem, not even the 20Gig 7200rpm. So i would say its very much like the IBM problem, and alike also in that it hasnt been fixed quickly enough! :(
The drives would just completly fail anywhere between 1 hour and 1 month from purchase.
/rant...
I had a IBM 20gig fail on me just two weeks ago--right after my brother lost two Maxtors. IBM was very good about filling the warranty--much better than Maxtor! The 20gig had been running smoothly for about a year.
In reality, all hard drives are made pretty much the same way. (For some GREAT information on everything harddrive related, check out this site.) For some reason IBM appears to be in a bit of a slump, but I remember a few years ago everyone was saying "don't buy a maxtor--they're cheap trash." Whatever you buy, just remember that your precious data resides on ferroceramic disks spinning at 5200-10000 rpm with the means of destruction--the read head--floating mere microns above. Back up often!
-s
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Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
"We currently use and recommend Maxtor drives"
Shit, Maxtor drives? Those are at the very bottom of my list of reliable drives, trying hard for a place next to Western Digital. Seriously, couldn't they have picked a better drive? Fujitsu still makes some good quality drives. They're very quite, too.
OTOH, maybe Maxtor's gotten better since they incorporated Quantum... but I dunno. It doesn't seem terribly likely to me.
In additon, here's a taping FAQ: http://www.phish.net/PhishFAQ/tape-qs.html
The time of day is 29:33.
On the other side, I think that GNU/Hurd with its microkernel design is much better suited to handle modern hardware for on single-user systems. If only they had more qualified developers with enough time.
This Sony page tells us that any CD carrying the "compact disc digital audio" logo is compliant to the IEC 908 standard and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (the RED Book). Any way to get the labels in for wrongfully using that logo (if they do) ?