How Many Techs

**AlienDyne** · August 12th, 2002, 02:21 AM

Originally posted by Outcoded
I'm noticing a large amount of hardware dying young, not just hard disks.

Just don't build em like they used to.

That's right!

I spend a lot of time RMA'ing customer stuff every day. Don't know what's wrong. This is getting on my nerves.

**Garak** · August 12th, 2002, 11:44 AM

I had this alot with DELL system, BTW nice to see you Aliendyne..

...

**AlienDyne** · August 13th, 2002, 06:07 AM

Nice to see you too Garak!

**FatalException0E** · August 14th, 2002, 07:43 PM

Originally posted by silencio
I just had an 8 month old Ultrastar 36Gig die unexpectedly. Apparently IBM isn't limitting it's lousy engineering to the GXP series.

So its not just me...good, I was getting worried.

**ironwill99** · August 15th, 2002, 10:28 AM

IBM Ultrastar drives use glass platters that for some odd reason don't give off the loud clicking sound you hear when normal hard drives crash (crash=media scraped off the platters). Its fun to open up one of those and shine a flashlight on the crashed part of the platters. If it is crashed bad enough you can see right through to the bottom of the drive.

**condor** · August 19th, 2002, 04:14 AM

I noticed this trend as well. It started about 3 years ago and it's growing since.

I've seen everything from dead mobo's thorough RAM sticks to HDDs and Video and sound cards.

I think the cause is the part that dies the most often - the PSU !

I've seen more bad ATX PSU's in one month than I did AT PSUs in over 3 years !!

I bet that over 90% of RMA's are because of problems with power supplies - all it takes is a little surge or sag to make rhe chips in your system go

**Tr!une** · August 20th, 2002, 06:47 PM

Thanks for the tip Condor. I have run into several 230 Watt ATX powersupplies that have died. Some smoked and died, some burned caps on the Mobo and how many other intermittent errors can be attributed to them I don't know. But I am now starting to think replacing the PS should be an early troubleshooting step.

**jimmm33** · August 22nd, 2002, 10:21 PM

I have seen a lot of power supplies going bad.

Also an awful lot of WD 20GB drives.

**Pericles** · August 24th, 2002, 05:56 AM

Wow, this thread is right up my alley. I have recently been complaining to my associates of this verry same thing -shotty craftsmenship behind today's hardware.

This summer has been devistating for me. I've had so many personal hardware failures it isn't even funny. It made me stop and take a closer look at the industry that I have loved for the past four years.

Since May I have lost: 2 motherboards, 3 hard drives (all WDs), 3 power supplies, 4 sticks of RAM, 1 T-Bird 850, 1- Link. dsl/cbl rtr, 1- D-Link 900AP+ wap, and 3 MS optical mice; 2 optical explorers and 1 wireless optical.

The reasons for the failures vary. Some were DOA, some were victims of power surges, some were taken down by virus activity (mainly the BIOSes of the boards I lost), and some just died prematurely from regular day to day use.

Are these isolated incidences -I don't think so. As a corp. tech, I've experienced even more losses. Regardless of the indivudual reasons for each component failure, one theme seems to ring true: they just don't make 'em like they used to!

Pericles

**NooNoo** · August 24th, 2002, 06:46 AM

I think much of it is to do with forever driving the prices down, something has got to give somewhere....

**Fatal0E** · August 27th, 2002, 09:18 AM

I am finding about 5% doa rate with WD's, then usually within 2 weeks they come back full of bad sectors, run the data life guard tools and it usuallly fixes drives, and they dont come back again.

We have about a 75% return rate on IBM's. But I am running my personal machine on a 60gxp 60gb for about 14months now without problems.

Most of our drives are now Samsung, I've never seen a doa Samsung, and failures are very rare, think i've only rma'd 3 60gb 5400's.

**Radical Dreamer** · August 28th, 2002, 01:12 AM

The worst with RMA's around here is 20GB WD.....actually WD in general, we see very few maxtors go bad, and only slightly more seagates.

**ironwill99** · August 28th, 2002, 09:52 AM

Fatal0E

OH MY GOD! SAMSUNG?

Maybe they got their act together but i would never use their HDs for anything even remotely important. Maybe they decided to stop making junk for a change but i can't escape the memories of hundreds of dead samsung drives sitting in my lab. Oh the horror. I am not trying to insult your choice of drives, all i am saying is don't expect much from them and you won't be let down. coming from a data recovery prospective i would recomend sticking with maxtor, WD or seagate.

**ironwill99** · August 28th, 2002, 10:07 AM

i have always beleved that companies will market crappy products as long as it is profitable to do so. I think it pays off in the long run to get a case with a decent power supply, you know the ones that have thicker wires, and high quality motherboards and memory. Saving hours of agony trouble-shooting is money well spent IMHO.

**Fubar** · August 28th, 2002, 11:04 AM

The process of putting crap on the shelves and then RMAing it is cheaper than having a QA dept and all its overhead. So its your call, what do you think this lying sacks of s*#$ are doing. It a bottom line world out there!

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