On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 09:52:51PM -0400, Edward A. Berry wrote:
> Another question about computer hardware- If I configure a computer at
> the Dell site, it costs about $700 to add a 2TB SATA drive. On
> amazon.com or Staples or such, a 2TB drive costs ~$110. to $200 depending
> on brand.
>
> Are the Dell-installed drives much faster
No.
> or more reliable
No.
> or have a better warranty?
No. In fact they frequently have a worse warranty than the exact same
retail product with a non-Dell part number.
One of the ways that Dell keeps costs down is to negotiate a bulk deal
with the hard drive OEMs where they provide Dell the exact same drives they
sell in the retail channel, but with a shorter warranty, typically 1 year
instead of 3 or 5 years.
> After all, RAID is supposed to stand for redundant array of inexpensive
> disks, and we could afford a lot more redundancy at the Amazon.com price.
RAID is good for performance and uptime reasons, but it is _not_ a
replacement for backups. You probably knew that, but I'll mention it for
the audience playing along at home.
> And, are there any brands or models that should be avoided due to known
> reliability issues?
Not really. Seagate had some firmware issues with their first 1.5 TB
models, but they were worked out fairly quickly. I think any of the major
vendors are going to be fairly competitve when it comes to reliability.
The important thing is to look at the drive warranty. The lower-end drives
will have 3 year or shorter warranties, and the higher-end drives will have
5 year warranties. Buy a model with a 5 year warranty.
-ben
--
| Ben Eisenbraun | Software Sysadmin |
| Structural Biology Grid | http://sbgrid.org |
| Harvard Medical School | http://hms.harvard.edu |
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