[ale] OT: WD "Advanced Format" and "Green Drives"

Fri Apr 9 16:44:11 EDT 2010

Some of the bigger things we've received come in wooden crates and/or
have tip indicators.   If they were not handle properly its usually
fairly evident once its on the dock.

Today I got a legacy server from an acquisition we did and found they
had made a cardboard box out of two others boxes then put that inside
yet another one - then they wrapped it all up with shrink wrap.  When I
opened it all I found one of the fans laying in the inner box and that
the front door that they'd locked was still locked but the plastic side
bard it locked to had broken loose so it wasn't "really" locked any
longer.   There's also one little piece of rubber/plastic that I have no
clue as to its purpose or if it was really part of this server.
Surprisingly enough despite all that it booted up fine. 

I thought I was done with SCO Legacy servers until this showed up today.
:-(

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
David M Lemcoe Jr.
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 4:18 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] OT: WD "Advanced Format" and "Green Drives"

On 4/9/2010 15:57, Jim Kinney wrote: 

I did a wiring project at DHL some time back. I observed their handling
crew would throw the boxes tagged "fragile" _harder_ than the others
that were not marked. If they heard tinkeling sounds ofterwards it was a
source of much hilarity.

FedEx drove a forklift fork through a server case I shipped out. When it
was delivered, they positioned the boxes to hide the damage and ran back
to the truck. 2 layers of 300lb cardboard, 4 inches of polystyrene foam,
another layer of 200lb cardboard and the metal case side all had a gash
5 inches wide and 1/2 inch tall. Mobo was dead as was one cpu and 2 out
the 6 DIMMs.

I have since designed a hard-sided server shipping case with internal
shock mounts that should let a server survive a 6 foot drop. 

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:05 PM, William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com>
wrote:

Helpful advice from a newegg review. I've seen this elsewhere in their
reviews, too.

"Here's a suggestion for anyone buying a hard drive, go with FedEx, the
express saver is the cheapest. I know it cost more than UPS and Newegg's
"free shipping" isn't FedEx, but here's the deal: I have bought over 30
hard drives (Western Digital and Seagate) through Newegg in the past 2
years, 100% of the ones shipped FedEx are still running, 80% of the ones
shipped UPS were either DOA or failed within 6 months. UPS beats the
He11 out of their shipments, even their website states that every
package is subject to a 6 foot drop. Do the math, free shipping or
cheaper UPS shipping isn't free in the long run. I ship my non-fragile
items with the free shipping, but I do a separate order and use FedEx
for hard drives and Motherboards."

wf

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 13:45 -0400, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> I would avoid drives with 4KiB physical blocks for a while longer
> unless you want to take extra care about alignment etc.
>
> As an example parted only got alignment support for them in Dec. 2009
> (parted 2.0 or 2.1)
>
> My preferred distro is OpenSuse they only got that version of parted
> into their factory distro source code last friday.  It is supposed to
> part of the "milestone 5" release they are doing over the weekend, but
> milestone 5 is effectively a alpha release of the distro.
>
> So I would have to be using a alpha release of that distro to get true
> 4KiB partition alignment support.
>
> And at this point no one has even reported testing the full alpha
> release against a 4 KiB drive.
>
> There first released version with support will be 11.3 that comes out
in July.
>
> Greg
>
> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Brian Pitts <brian at polibyte.com>
wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm thinking about getting a large, slow hard drive [0] for backups
and
> > media storage. I'll be putting it in a USB enclosure. Does anyone
have
> > experience, good or ill, with the latest Western Digital drives that
use
> > 4KiB blocks and "intellipark".
> >
> > [0] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136513
> >
> > --
> > All the best,
> > Brian Pitts
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >
>
>
>

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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness         

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I heard a similar story about a server being completely destroyed thanks
to shipping. 

I guess the only way to get a server that you know has been treated
properly is to go to the factory and get it off the line :/

David

Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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