On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 2:31 AM, Herbert Graf wrote: > One was an IBM > 13.6GB Deskstar, they were nicknamed "Deathstars" by the industry... That was quite infamous and I knew quite a few incidents related to this particular drive. > The last was my brother's IBM laptop drive. > As a result, I've never purchased another IBM/Hitachi hard drive. My last drive failure was a Dell Laptop Drive back in 2003 (SAMRT failure) and Dell's US customer service was top notch (I was in US then) and the replacement driver reached me in two days. The drive is a Hitachi type. > As for which ones I do purchase, I personally consider consumer hard > drive a commodity type of purchase, there isn't much on the quality side > to differentiate them anymore. I believe this is the case. > My last 4 purchases were all Maxtors. There are no more Maxtor HDDs after they were purchased by Seagate. The brand is still there but I believe they are made in the same factories. And I think the brand is now mainly for the external drives. Even that may change soon. I believe the Maxtor brand will disappear sooner or later. Relevant news: 1. 5500 job cut in Maxtor Singapore. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400EFDA113DF936A35750C0A9639C8B63 2. Seagate to close down Maxtor plants and 3500 job cuts http://www.crn.com/it-channel/192202016 Singapore used to produce 90% of the HDD drive but now the industry has shrunk by quite a bit resulting 10s of thousands of job loss. In 1999, Western Digital closed its Singapore plant and cut about 2000 jobs. Over the years, Seagate also trimmed its workforce in Singapore by quite a lot. It still has a big presence in Singapore but has shifted quite a big part to countries like Malaysia and China. Xiaofan -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist