After doing some research on the 'net, I found that Fujitsu offers a 5 year warranty on their enterprise SCSI drives, which is pretty amazing. The drive in redefine that is failing was manufactured in March of 2000, so it is 4.5 years old. So, I called up Fujitsu today, to see what I could do about getting my drive repaired under warranty. The first piece of information that the nice Fujitsu woman asked me for was the model number of the drive. I give it to her (noticing that it ended in the letters "DL" as I said it), and upon hearing this, she immediately went into the song and dance -- "Did this come with a Dell computer?". To which I replied that it did, and she of course told me that I had to deal with Dell directly.
It seems that one of the ways in which Dell gets a discount on parts is to negotiate a lesser warranty with the manufacturer. They then turn around to me, the customer, and sell me an entire computer with a 1 year warranty, that I would need to pay to extend, even though if I were to buy the parts myself, individual ones may have longer warranties.
On a lark, I contacted Dell (I saw "on a lark" because I knew that my computer has long since been out of Dell's warranty), and the Dell representative told me that my computer was in fact out of warranty, and that I could look into buying a replacement part from Dell if I wanted.
I'm not really pissed off about any of this, I just find it interesting. It is also another case for building my own computer that I hadn't really considered before.
Another interesting thing that I learned when researching my soon-to-be-completely-dead disk is that while Fujitsu warrants the non-OEM version of the drive for 5 years, they go on to say that it was only designed to last for 5 years. Basically, after 5 years, any additional mileage that you get out of it is due to your own personal good fortune. I find that to be interesting for an enterprise-class device, which can oftentimes be in service for far longer than initially planned. It also makes me suspect of 10,000 RPM (and higher) drives. My gut tells me that the higher rotational speed of the platters hampers drive longevity. The 7,200 RPM IBM drive that I am using now as a backup was manufactured in September of 1998, and has been in continual operation since I have owned it, until June of this year. I think that IBM really knew how to make disks, once upon a time...
All of that being said, I am still running off of the suspect Fujitsu drive. Since fixing the bad sector, it seems to be performing okay. I beat it to hell today upgrading a whole bunch of ports, and I haven't seen any more SCSI errors. I think it is just a matter of time, however...
-Andy.
Posted by andyr at September 22, 2004 12:54 AMWell, IBM *did* know how to make disks, before the Deskstar 75GXP fiasco, which some consider to be a major factor in IBM's offloading of its hard drive business.
Posted by: Mike Pirnat at September 22, 2004 7:37 AMWhile this is a bummer, I wouldn't look at the warrantee thing as a screw job. Dell getting the HDs on the cheap is a way of paying for the service of putting the machine together for you in the first place. While you, I and a lot of our friends could put a machine together for cheaper, the vast majority of their customers cannot. Taking a hit on the warrantee probably helps mitigate their construction costs.
Of course, this could just as easily be a case of skimming off the top rather than passing the savings on to you. There's no way to tell without doing an audit or something. However, my childlike faith in the free market makes me think that it's more of a service than a screw job.
personally, if a drive lasts more than 5 years, I'm happy to accept that as borrowed time.
Posted by: Mark at September 22, 2004 11:01 AM