<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/17/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Brian Wood</b> <<a href="mailto:beww@beww.org">beww@beww.org</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style=""><br> <div><span class="q"><div>On Apr 17, 2007, at 10:15 AM, ryan patterson wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><br>A five year warranty is not marketing. A five year warranty is a five year warranty. I can't talk about seagate in particular, but I have gotten six different hard drives replaced under warranty. I switched to SCSI years ago primarily because of the longer warranty for SCSI drives. The longer warranty is the primary reason why SCSI is more expensive not hardware cost. For a harddrive that will be powered on as much as a MythTV drive the longer warranty is very important.
<br></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>For you it apparently is. For me, if an 80 or 120GB drive that I had purchased 3 or 4 years ago failed I would just replace it with a larger one, even if it was still "under warranty". It's just not worth the hassle, plus the shipping cost, for a drive I could buy today for $35. The shipping might cost me $20 so I would be "saving" $15 in order to get an obsolete small-capacity drive, just not worth it. Remember too, if you read your warranty, that the maker has the right to "replace" your drive with a used one, not a new one, and you do not get any additional warranty beyond your original purchase.
</div><div><br></div><div>Today's 500GB drives might be different, but I doubt it. I suspect that in 3 to 5 years they will be available just as cheaply as the 80-120GB units today.</div><div><br></div><div>There might be factors that change this picture. Small form-factor drives carry a price premium, and if you are outside the USA the financial situation might well be different.
</div><div><br></div><div>There are certainly differences between high-end SCSI drives and consumer IDE/SATA units other than the warranty. You could start with a 15,000 RPM rotational speed. If you wish to believe the differences are only in the warranty then there's not really much I can do to change that belief though.
</div><div><br></div><div>If you have had to replace 6 drives under warranty I'd seriously consider another vendor.</div><div><br></div><div>The bottom line is that I don't want a warranty replacement, I want a drive that doesn't need to be replaced, and I'm happy to pay for that.
</div></div><span class="q"></span></div></blockquote></div><br>I said the warranty is the <span style="font-weight: bold;">PRIMARY</span> reason SCSI drives are more expensive. I never said it was the only reason. Why do you want to compare a 15k RPM SCSI drive against a regular IDE (do you actually mean ATA) drive? That is like comparing a Ford focus against a Chevy corvette and saying all Chevys are expensive because they are all sportscars.
<br><br>I really don't understand your logic about how you would rather just buy a new drive then get a warranty replacement. If you ever used RAID you would know that when a drive fails there is no point in replacing it with a larger drive. All the extra space will be wasted. Also the warranty applies to the replacement drive too. Why do you think it wouldn't?
<br><br>All hard drive manufacturers make drives that fail. There is no company that makes a drive that is guarantied to not be replaced. So even though you would be happy to pay for that, you can't. If you plan on upgrading to a newer hard drive in a year or two then by all means buy a cheap one with a short warranty. There is nothing wrong with that.
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>_____________<br>Ryan Patterson