3 Major HD Makers Recalling Drives? [UPDATED]

mauriceh writes "Seems that 3 major Hard Disk companies have a problem with defective 40GB platters. A major recall is in the works." Seagate, Hitachi, and Maxtor 40 & 80 gig drives appear to be the troubled drives. Update: 05/30 12:37 GMT by M : There is apparently no recall. Digitimes has issued a revision/retraction, and TheInquirer has a story as well.

Comments

no comments and /.ed already

[jonfromspace]

Or maybe they were using said HD.

DEAR GOD

[randomdef]

WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE PORN? all those hours i spent....er...downloading...

Seagate refutes this

[bluegreenone]

The Register actually had an article on this in which Seagate denied this story. It does seem odd that 3 manufacturers would be having the same problem.

Just as I suspected

[Michael's a Jerk!]

The warrenties being lowered was a sign quality as dropping. Data densitites are so huge these these days. The question of Drive reliability has been asked before. It's good reading.

Re:Just as I suspected

[tomstdenis]

What's worse though is with this quick "progress" you can't buy those more rugged 10/20 GB drives any more that seem to last forever...

Yeah progress!

Tom

Re:Just as I suspected

[wwwillem]

you can't buy those more rugged 10/20 GB drives any more

After spending last weekend trying to salvage stuff from my 9 month old 80GB IBM drive that went into coma, I can only 800% agree with you.... But if you (and I) think that ruggedness is more important than performance or "buck per giga", maybe we better look at SCSI drives. I've couple of those Fujitsu 4GB drives around that could function as a boat anchor. Real engineering stuff.

On the other hand, I'm very afraid some /.-ers will quickly point out that today's SCSI drives are as much crap as the IDE ones :-(. But it's an avenue worth exploring....

Re:Just as I suspected

[ColaMan]

the lowered warranties are not a sign of dropped quality. It's foolish to think that. My big Western Digital hasn't seen so much as one problem, and I don't expect it to for many years


Really? Strange that the beancounters from *all* the major HD makers seem to think otherwise. Otherwise at least *one* of them would simply stick to three year warranty and VERY LOUDLY publicise the fact.

They've all done the sums and if it's more cost effective to manufacture (slightly) defective parts with a reduced warranty, well, they're right onto it.

All I want is a drive bigger than 40GB that'll actually *last* 5 years. Is that so hard? Apparently yes. I've got 80MB drives that are thirteen years old and still get run 8hrs a day. I don't think I'll ever see that of the new, 1 year warranty drives.

Re:Just as I suspected

[Rolo Tomasi]

I think the users are a big part of the problem. If you don't cool your drive properly, it will die. Heat kills bearings. And the failure rate inreaseses exponentially with temperature. A drive that might run 10 years at 30C might die after 1 year at 60C. What percentage of people actually have active, fresh air cooling for their drives? My guess is that modern drives are more sensitive to heat, and the manufacturers can't really control the cooling design of every individual PC, so they just shortened the warranty.

You might want to use a utility like DTemp or hddtemp to check your drive's temperature, and improve your cooling if your temps are over 35C. I've been using a Chieftec Dragon case for my home box for a few years now, which has a really nice drive cage with an integrated 80mm fan that blows fresh air directly over the drives, and my temps are rarely over 30C.

Limited effects....

[oiuyt]

Only affects drives from a single source in Mainland China that were sent to Taiwan. May affect drives that were marketed elsewhere, but worries about YOUR drive being about to go up in smoke are, for the most part, unfounded.

/.'ed already

[Ryan Stortz]

Already /.'ed, but I found some other versions of this story.

Hard drive makers' stories start unravelling
Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi say there's no hard drive recalls
Seagate denies Taiwan hard drive recall claims

Maxtor drives

[Psykechan]

I've got a 40GB Maxtor in this system but I haven't had any probl

From China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, those drives are suffering from SARS.

goes like this

[djupedal]

Looks like drives (3 manufs. listed) manufactured in the last 8 weeks, with country of origin as China.

If your drive/computer was made before March 2003, my guess is you aren't on the list to worry. Certainly anything from before 2003 isn't part of this discussion. Most drives from the last 8 weeks are still in the distribution channel, and just starting to surface, so again, if you bought yours even as little as a month ago, you are mostly likely clear. Also, they tend to go to the OEM's first, so raw drives would be a bit lower on the worry list, me thinks.

...as he takes comfort in only buying WD, once again :)

Re:Topical?

[Em Emalb]

I sincerely question the Slashdot-newsworthiness of this.

Hi, I am a member of the slashdot welcome team. You must be new here.

Welcome!

This is not true.

[LloydSeve]

Seagate has officially issued a press release
saying this they have not issued ANY recall
regarding drives shipped to Taiwan.

Although Maxtor and Hitachi were not available
for comment, Seagate has "damned" this report
innacurate.
Here is the link to the report of Seagate
denying ANY HDD Recalls.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/30897.html

Makes perfect sense...

[sterno]

In all likelyhood, all three of those drive companies are buying their platters from the same vendor. They may all take those drives and put them together separately, but it's not unusualy for competing vendors to source parts from the same company.