Hi,

Does anyone have a reliable estimate of the MTBF for a Maxtor DiamondMax
Plus 8?

Here's my story. In 2001, I purchased a 40 GB Quantum Fireball SE and built
a triple boot system around it; Win2000, WinME and Linux. Then within a year
it failed because the hard disk controller could no longer detect it. I was
mad as hell because I lost a lot of work. It wasn't a complete lose because
I had a good working backup system using a 2 GB Removable Castlewood Orb. (I
had to return the first Castlewood before I got a working model.) Anyway, I
went out and purchased a reliable 40 GB IBM IC35L040 AVVA07-0 to use as a
system drive. Now when a manufacturer produces a lot of defective parts,
that manufacturer is likely to go out of business. My 40 GB Quantum Fireball
SE was still under a one year warrantee when it failed. When I checked, I
found that Quantum had been acquired by Maxtor. So I contacted Maxtor with
my beef and I was impressed by their honesty. Maxtor promised to replace my
dead 40 GB Quantum Fireball SE free of charge. All I had to do was to return
the failed disk to them. They paid all the freight. So I installed their
replacement drive, a 40 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 in my system as a spare
drive.

Now after four years my 40 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 has suffered the same
fate as my original 40 GB Quantum Fireball SE, the hard disk controller can
not detect it. However, I'm not stupid. I didn't lose anything valuable this
time, since I did not trust the reliability of Maxtor's replacement. The
only thing of note that I stored on the 40 GB Maxtor (other than system
backups) was a four year collection of porn that I downloaded from the
internet. When I was a kid my stamp collection was stolen by professional
thieves and I cried. But several gigabytes of downloaded porn is no big
deal.

Maxtor may have requested return of the failed Quantum Fireball in order to
improve their manufacturing. The Maxtor DiamondMax is long out of warrantee.
However, there may be some engineering types reading this message who would
like to take on the challenge. Contact me if are willing to pay the freight.

Roger Coppock
2600-3600 State St
San Diego, CA 92114-3035
(619) 465-9525
rcoppock (AT) adnc (DOT) com

Ian St. John <istjohn (AT) noemail (DOT) usa> wrote


No one does, in spades with it in your system.

Smart move not backing up what you cared about losing.

Plenty found that particular drive one of the worst around at that time.

Its more complicated than that with hard drives, and Quantum
did go bust, and IBM flogged their hard drive operation to Hitachi
essentially because it wasnt making any money for them.

And losing it might save you from ending up blind.

Or they just offer a warranty.

Easier to get the porn off the net themselves.

Ian St. John wrote:

If you trust the reliability of _any_ disk, you're stupid.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"Ian St. John" wrote:

About 20 seconds.

Or 30, if you're one of the lucky ones.


Odie
--
Retrodata
www.retrodata.co.uk
Globally Local Data Recovery Experts

On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 21:04:46 -0400, "Ian St. John"
<istjohn (AT) noemail (DOT) usa> wrote:


I don't know what the mtbf is, but I've seen a lot of problems with
the 40gb maxtors. I finally got smart, told people if they wanted
40gb to get one that wasn't a maxtor.

In message <hc36a1ddhc1ibie102tmodtc3lmdo5sm6t (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>, Chris Hill
<hillco (AT) earthlink (DOT) net> writes
....
MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) is an average across a number of drives.
In your case your particular drive has a MTBF of 4 years (admittedly a
rather small sample).

It's natures way of telling you that all that porn has made your drive
go blind.

--
Jeremy Boden