> > you imply that vendors are knowingly shipping half their product > > that will die within even a 1yr warranty period, and then have > > to be replaced at significant cost to the vendor. I really can't > > see why you think they're so stupid! the alternate explanation, > > which fits the data (such as it is) perfectly well is that the > > supply chain damages the drives. > > This is certainly possible, however, you imply that the vendors are > knowingly shipping their drives through supply chains which damage the > drives and then have to be replaced at significant cost to the vendor. no, just the opposite. when vendors sell through "channel", it means direct from the vendor to a large multinational like Avnet or Ingram. I would guess that that official channel is fine, since there are adequate means of control, training, feedback. perhaps even the official retail channel is fine, since retail boxed disks are pretty well protected.) the problem I see is the grey-market "channel" - J Random Corner Computer Shoppe where they have a stack of bare drives sitting in the display case. such handling is clearly a huge risk. that's about the only fact that any of us has about this issue. there's no data to support the idea that drive vendors knowingly ship broken disks. the fact that there are not hordes of class-action lawsuits is a good indication that there's no ambulance to chase. > that necessity. Only repeated drive failures has started to bring us to > the realization this is no longer optional. no, it's always been that way. 10 years ago, the drive market was more rarified, tended to be professionally pre-installed, and vastly smaller and lower-variance than now. $5,000 scsi disks did fail back then, sometimes quite soon upon delivery. of course, margins were much higher, and "materials margins" (relative to theoretical limits) were higher as well. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
