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

[David M Lemcoe Jr.]

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 
> <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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
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>
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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
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