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On Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:57:17 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> On 05/04/2011 06:07 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> On 4/5/2011 7:41, clipka wrote:
>>> Am 05.04.2011 16:09, schrieb Invisible:
>>>
>>>> I have absolutely no idea whether these "server-grade" drives really
>>>> *are* more reliable, or whether it's just a sucker tax.
>>>
>>> Server drives are designed to endure continuous use.
>>>
>>> Desktop drives are designed to endure lots of power cycles.
>>
>> The drives in a NAS are exactly the same as what you'd buy off the
>> shelf in an electronics store.
>>
>> Google has a whitepaper telling about the drive reliability based on
>> statistics from half a million disk drives. There's little correlation
>> between "category" and reliability.
>
> So it *is* a sucker tax then.
It depends. If you purchase through, say, EMC, what you're paying the
'big bucks' for is the service contract, which in my experience is worth
its weight in gold - they consider a single reported *recoverable* bit
error on a drive in their cabinets as reason enough to replace the
drive. The system calls them and a technician calls the named contact to
schedule the hot replacement of the drive that reported the error.
But such service certainly ain't cheap. But their NAS devices are
*solid* and their service (again in my experience) is second to none.
Jim
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On 4/6/2011 19:20, Jim Henderson wrote:
> they consider a single reported *recoverable* bit
> error on a drive in their cabinets as reason enough to replace the
> drive.
Google's whitepapaer basically said "Nothing says when a drive is going to
die, but you have a +30% chance of it dying in the next six months if you
get any read errors at all, recoverable or not."
In particular, all that S.M.A.R.T. stuff was stupid.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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On Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:53:54 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/6/2011 19:20, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> they consider a single reported *recoverable* bit error on a drive in
>> their cabinets as reason enough to replace the drive.
>
> Google's whitepapaer basically said "Nothing says when a drive is going
> to die, but you have a +30% chance of it dying in the next six months if
> you get any read errors at all, recoverable or not."
>
> In particular, all that S.M.A.R.T. stuff was stupid.
I'd believe that - which is why for critical data, I'd prefer an
arrangement like the one my previous employer had with EMC to deal with
it.
Jim
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>> So it *is* a sucker tax then.
>
> It depends. If you purchase through, say, EMC, what you're paying the
> 'big bucks' for is the service contract, which in my experience is worth
> its weight in gold.
This is presumably why all Dell products are 7x the price of any other
supplier. Which would be great, if their service contract was worth its
weight in paper clips. But it isn't.
Hypothetically, in the event of a hardware fault, they're supposed to
come over here and fix it within 4 hours. In reality, in the event of a
hardware fault, THEY DO NOT GIVE A DAMN. They're just not interested.
You file a trouble ticket and NOTHING HAPPENS. You call them, they take
down all the details, and NOTHING HAPPENS. They don't lift a finger to
help you in any way at all.
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On 4/7/2011 1:04, Invisible wrote:
> Hypothetically, in the event of a hardware fault, they're supposed to come
> over here and fix it within 4 hours.
It's not just Dell, either. Sun did the same thing to us, back when a Sun
16-core machine cost $100K or so. We had 24x7 4-hour replacement contracts,
as long as it didn't happen on a weekend and you were really close to where
the tech guy was already.
We had contracts on our stack of Dell machines, and they'd come out and fix
the stuff, but they'd come out pretty promptly, decide yes indeed it's
broken, and we'll expect the parts to arrive by mid next-week. And about
half the dell machines crapped out in the first 3 or 4 months, one way or
the other, with two or three being DOA.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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>> Hypothetically, in the event of a hardware fault, they're supposed to
>> come over here and fix it within 4 hours.
>
> It's not just Dell, either.
Worrying, but not surprising.
> We had contracts on our stack of Dell machines, and they'd come out and
> fix the stuff, but they'd come out pretty promptly, decide yes indeed
> it's broken, and we'll expect the parts to arrive by mid next-week. And
> about half the dell machines crapped out in the first 3 or 4 months, one
> way or the other, with two or three being DOA.
At least all our Dell stuff has had flawless reliability. Oh, except
that ancient tape robot that was out of warranty anyway...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:04:16 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> So it *is* a sucker tax then.
>>
>> It depends. If you purchase through, say, EMC, what you're paying the
>> 'big bucks' for is the service contract, which in my experience is
>> worth its weight in gold.
>
> This is presumably why all Dell products are 7x the price of any other
> supplier. Which would be great, if their service contract was worth its
> weight in paper clips. But it isn't.
My experience has differed. I had a laptop (for example) in a class that
had a hard drive failure - I called Dell support and they overnighted me
a replacement hard drive so I could get the student working the next
day. Not as good as "a tech is on the way", but we paid for overnight
service and got it.
> Hypothetically, in the event of a hardware fault, they're supposed to
> come over here and fix it within 4 hours. In reality, in the event of a
> hardware fault, THEY DO NOT GIVE A DAMN. They're just not interested.
> You file a trouble ticket and NOTHING HAPPENS. You call them, they take
> down all the details, and NOTHING HAPPENS. They don't lift a finger to
> help you in any way at all.
Do you have an account manager with them? I know some companies do have
service account managers/technical account managers (not sure what the
Dell analogue is), but if you are a named account for them, then you
should be able to escalate the issue, since that's what your company is
paying for.
And if you don't get what you're paying for, then it's time to look to
another supplier or to raise holy hell with the supplier you're dealing
with.
That said, I have heard that there are *huge* disparities in how Dell
deals with US customers vs. customers outside the US - so your issues
aren't unique to the best of my knowledge.
Jim
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>> This is presumably why all Dell products are 7x the price of any other
>> supplier. Which would be great, if their service contract was worth its
>> weight in paper clips. But it isn't.
>
> My experience has differed.
>
> That said, I have heard that there are *huge* disparities in how Dell
> deals with US customers vs. customers outside the US - so your issues
> aren't unique to the best of my knowledge.
Well, apparently everyone in our IT department is disappointed with the
service from Dell - so much so that apparently we're looking at other
supplier options.
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On Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:50:20 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> This is presumably why all Dell products are 7x the price of any other
>>> supplier. Which would be great, if their service contract was worth
>>> its weight in paper clips. But it isn't.
>>
>> My experience has differed.
>>
>> That said, I have heard that there are *huge* disparities in how Dell
>> deals with US customers vs. customers outside the US - so your issues
>> aren't unique to the best of my knowledge.
>
> Well, apparently everyone in our IT department is disappointed with the
> service from Dell - so much so that apparently we're looking at other
> supplier options.
That's a reasonable next step. :)
Jim
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Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
> I have found that is just plain how it works in video. I'm not sure why. I
> haven't been able to find a capture card that will process HD coming off a
> TV cable, in spite of every TV having this capability. The few capture cards
> that *seem* to have this capability require you to use their custom playback
> software that only runs on the same machine where you have the card plugged
> in, which kind of defeats the purpose of capturing the stuff in the first place.
Have a look at the Technisat Cablestar HD2 and DVBviewer
I've used the Technisat Skystar 2 for about 9 years now in combination with the
DVBviewer ant it makes for a very nice and well working PVR. You can also
separate the recording and the vieweing part by using the recording service
beta.
I've had to retire my Skystar recently because the reception had turned bad, I
suppose the HF-filters in the tuner have given out.
Regards
Aydan
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