<div dir="ltr">As a guy who has made my living in computer hardware since 1989, I'm with MT on this subject. It's not really all that much different than automobile warranties. How many of us drive our cars for MANY years after the manufacturer's warranty expires. It is different, however, in that computer hardware pretty much continually gets cheaper. it is absurd to expect manufacturers to sell a 4TB hard drive for sub $200 and warranty it for 5 years. My folks bought one of the early IBM PC XT systems and the measly 5Meg drive cost an extra $1000. When you have margins like that you can offer long warranties. But with prices as low as they are today, just buy extra drives and "get over it." Overall, both computer hardware and automobiles are FAR more reliable than they were 20 years ago. Check out the MTBF ratings on modern hard drives. Most last well beyond their warranty periods, but some do fail within the warranty and while as a group all are better, there are those few that fail. If you happen to have one of the "outliers" it sucks to be you, but only goes to show that statistics are of little use for the individual, only the aggregate. <br>
<div><br></div><div>On the subject of cars, if you ever listen to Sam Garage (Talk 920 am 11:00-Noon on Saturdays) he regularly tells folks NOT to run the gas tank empty because modern cars have in-tank fuel pumps that are cooled by the gasoline in the tank. If you make a habit of "running on empty..." the pump isn't adequately cooled which cab cause premature failure. Ron, you might pass that tip along to your Dad FWIW. </div>
<div><br></div><div>On the humidifier, Ron, we all know that electronics are sensitive to over voltage and shouldn't necessarily assume that the failure was because of crappy manufacturing without ruling out any near by lightning strikes in the past year. The old model most likely didn't have electronics and was less susceptible. But I have seen lightening do some crazy things to all sorts of electronics.</div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 2:44 PM, Jim Kinney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com" target="_blank">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Brian MacLeod <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nym.bnm@gmail.com" target="_blank">nym.bnm@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----<br>
Hash: SHA256<br>
<br>
</div>To some folks chagrin, I'm about to continue this subject, but it's<br>
because I feel this is now a point on which I can hopefully shed some<br>
light on why buying one hard drive at a time is a bad idea, and<br>
encourage those in the community to think a little farther ahead to<br>
save time and money.<br>
<br>
Most of that commentary is at the end, so if you'd like to skip to<br>
that and avoid my rebuttals, go ahead.<br>
<div><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Good stuff, Brian. I've used similar arguments to get cheapskates to buy decent gear instead of the least expensive walmart crap. My time has value. If I'm doing admin at home it's work at the same rate as I charge for my employment. Of course I don't pay myself. But it does come out of _MY_ time and that is far more valuable to me than work pay rate.<br>
<br></div><div>No one gets to their death bed and says "I wish I had spent more time at work.".<br><br><br></div><div>Drive warranty is based on the tested engineering capability of the drive. Think of the drive warranty as the point at which the manufacturer expects to begin to see returns. So a 1 -3 year drive is crap. It has a likelihood of failure in the timeframe of the non-failure of the enterprise drives. So I get a 5 drive pile using at least 2 different makers and build a RAID10 with 1 drive hot spare. ANY drive issue is cause for a new drive. The hot spare takes over and I replace the drive with the error and have a new hot spare. 5 year drives running 24x7 for 8 years with really decent cooling. I'm close to an array upgrade. Will do the same thing again with bigger drives and add an extra fan to make a push-pull cooling setup for the drives.<br>
<br></div><div>Oh. I use different makers in the the mirrors so a maker failure won't toast my array. Best money I EVER spent was the 10 tape carousel backup system and the time I spent learning how to use bacula.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
</font></span></div></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">-- <br><div dir="ltr">-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br></i></i></i></i></div>
</font></span></div></div>
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