[wplug] OT - word of warning on Maxtor 250GB drives

[Drew from Zhrodague]

> Quite a few places are now blowing out these drives crazy-cheap (the
> ATA-100 and ATA-133 versions, both 8MB cache).  I have quite a few of
> these (like 2TB), and in the last month I have lost 3 of them.  All
> under similar circumstances - when they near 75-80% full they start to
> flake, shortly thereafter your data is toast.  On one RMA the
> replacement drive I got went bad the day after I sent the failed drive
> it was intended to replace back to Maxtor - I am in the process of
> recalling that shipment and getting a replacement for the replacement to
> attempt to recover the 180GB of data that drive holds.
>
> 3 year warranties be damned - warranties do nothing for your lost data,
> just get you brand-new (or worse - refurbed) junk drives.  I am
> officially off Maxtor/Seagate.  I'll stick with Hitachi - least
> error-prone of the drives I have currently.

 	This is way late, but I had a crash myself this week, and have to 
comment.

 	I usually do a RAID-1 with two identical disks on my hosts. I am 
so affraid of losing data, that I just get into the habit of setting up my 
machines this way.

 	For a while now, I've had a host at home which shares /home and 
another couple of folders. Well, she's been running for years like that 
until hda died. It is still dead, but my data is STILL THERE!

 	If you're going to buy El Cheapo drives (like I do), get two of 
'em. You'll be glad you did when the first one fails!

-- 

Drew from Zhrodague		http://www.WiFiMaps.com
drew at zhrodague.net		http://www.zhrodague.net