[Soekris] Re: net4801/FreeBSD-current/Hitachi Travelstar 40Gb - what geometry?

[Chuck Yerkes]

Quoting Samuel Tardieu (sam at rfc1149.net):
...
> A few hours after starting using my IBM Travelstar 40GB, I got strange
> "clicks". I think this is what is called the infamous "click of
> death". Tonight, FreeBSD started reporting unrecoverable disk errors,
> and the disk took a very very very long time to fsck. I bought it new
> a few days ago and will return it to IBM. Gasp.

> Pro: my machine is now a lot more quiet since it has been running with
> a compact flash card instead of a disk :)
And isn't that why we LIKE the soekris in the first place?

> Cons: do not use a IBM/Hitachi Travelstar hard drive if you need to
> rely on it (looks fairly consistent with what I read on the WWW).

Right.  I will never again buy another Maxtor|Seagate|Quantum|IBM|Fujitsu
|yourBrandHere disk.

Look, they ALL go through good and bad spates.  And if you're buying
disks at "JoBob's Discount Disk Hut", you're likely getting the least
of the disks.

When I was buying Netapp disks in the late 90's, they cost a lot
more than JB's Discount Hut.  For the same disk.  But DEC would
buy from $Vendor, QA them and reject 1/4 - 1/3rd of them.  Pass
them to NetApp who would reject another 1/3rd-1/2 of them.  I don't
recall the exact numbers quoted, but the bottom line is that I,
the customer, never saw half the disks coming in.  And we had a
much smaller disk failure rate.

Sometimes vendors have bad runs and bad science.  1999-2000 Travelstars
had high failure rates.

You, the consumer of Walmart Kwuality disks, ARE seeing all those
disks.  And such a good price!

Go to any experienced admin and ask which disk vendor s/he will "never
buy from again" and you'll get a festival of answers.