Multiple HDD failures on new batch of PCs

[danielson81]

Hi there,

 

We bought 20 PCs in the summer from a a major supplier, about 6 of them have hard disk failures. Two of the machines are now on the 3rd HDD.

 

To the suppliers credit, they send a new hard drive out next day and collect the old one when we ask them. They also offer to send out an engineer if we want.

 

Apart from reporting the failed HDD each time, is there anything else one can do? Im tempted to reject the lot, but it would involve a lot of hassle.

 

It takes me about 45 mins to replace the HDD and deploy the image again via WDS etc.

[stonej]

Hello,

 

We had this problem a few years ago, they offered to send out an engineer and replace every hard drive from every machine in the batch that we had purchased. They would also do the imaging for us. They only thing that we forced was that the hard drive replaced had to be a completely different manufacturer, just in case it was a faulty batch from them.

[bandgeekmafia78]

Can I just ask... who was the supplier? If you don't want to publicise it can you PM me? We have had a lot of problems recently, sounds like it could be the same supplier!

[stonej]

Cannot PM yet as i don't have enough posts. Should be safe enough though, it was Stone Computers. To be fare quite a few pc manufacturers had the same issue with the hard drives (fujitsu if I remember) but the support we got from them was first class. A lot better than quite a few bigger companies...

[Killer_Bot]

How is it exactly they are failling? We have a few Stone laptops here and the only issue we've ever had it them randomly displaying the 'OS is not found'. No actual hardware errors for us though.

[stonej]

We had hard drives completly dying...purchased about 100 pcs, and all of them had to have the hdd replaced, randomly just complete fail - not detecting the hdd at all. As i said though Stone support if top class, never had 1 problem with them whatsoever, and this was the first major failure we had with them...which was nothing to do with them anyway!!! Due to this though, and nothing to do with me we moved off Stone to another big supplier..(who's support isn't as good by miles !!!)

[danielson81]

The ones in our machines are Western Digital ones, the model number in device manager is:

 

WDCWD1600AAJS-00L7A0

 

When ours die, the bios stops detecting them.

[gshaw]

Tip for the future, when speccing computers make sure they don't fit Fujitsu or Maxtor hard drives... over the years those two brands have had consistently awful reliability. I stick with Samsung or WD

[Duke5A]

Tip for the future, when speccing computers make sure they don't fit Fujitsu or Maxtor hard drives... over the years those two brands have had consistently awful reliability. I stick with Samsung or WD

 

Western Digital's image has started to tarnish with me, especially with 1TB or larger drives. As far as Samsung goes, they are all I use anymore. At home my NAS has four 1.5TB drives in it and stays powered 24/7 with not a single issue with one year of ownership. At work I've got a total of about 200 Optiplex 780s with Samsung 160GB drives with a little under a year of service on them, and I have yet to replace a single drive.

 

In defense of Stone, they probably get those warranty replacement parts from the manufacturer of the computers.

 

As mentioned by stonej, you're only real recourse is to demand a different brand. If not Samsung, I've had good luck with Seagates as well.

[Steven_Cleaver]

To be honest I had this with Stone a few years back, they must have replaced about 20 hard drives the first year, they replaced these as you said straight away, when we mentioned the issue they held their hands up and said their had been a problem with a batch of hard drives silicon in contamination in the assembly process and they offered to replace all the hard drives.If you contact them I am sure they would look at resolving this, especially as they will have records of your issues.

 

Still a happy Stone customer as I feel their support is second to none.

[Dos_Box]

Some of the older hands here still wake up at 3am shouting out 'Fujitsu!' Or 'Deskstar!'.

You weren't there man, you weren't there!

[andy_nic]

have to say for me Maxtor hard drives are a no go anymore we had 124 computers with these in they were rubbish the amount of times I built a image then lost it because they failed/ died on me, in the end started to swap them for some WD's and although they were smaller drives they lasted to till we got rid of the computers. In the end, they wouldn't ghost either so had to keep reloading windows then all the software.

[difinity]

Some of the older hands here still wake up at 3am shouting out 'Fujitsu!' Or 'Deskstar!'.

You weren't there man, you weren't there!

 

IBM Deathstars !!

[sparkeh]

Western Digital's image has started to tarnish with me, especially with 1TB or larger drives.

Snap!

Had no end of issues with WD drives recently. Was endlessly replacing the WD disks in one of my servers until HP sent out a complete set of replacement Seagate drives which have been great so far.

[SHimmer45]

IBM Deathstars !!

 

+1 on this

 

i also wouldnt touch Maxtor with a long pole, regardless if they have been brought out by seagate they dont seem to have improved at all, they are just a cheap drive

[Duke5A]

+1 on this

 

i also wouldnt touch Maxtor with a long pole, regardless if they have been brought out by seagate they dont seem to have improved at all, they are just a cheap drive

 

It's a shame too, they used to be a good drive until about the time they bought Quantum. After that it was all done hill from there. I remember opening a brand new 10GB Maxtor drive on Christmas only to find a re-branded Quantum in its place. It died four months later...

[SHimmer45]

the early quantums were decent enough....

[gshaw]

I had a Quantum 5 1/4" drive in my old Cyrix 233 PC... first one I installed XP on

 

Are Fujitsu drives still a nightmare these days? I've noticed some servers still come with them and I don't have much faith when I see them in the spec...