Quantum Fireball Plus 20AT

[Axel]

Has anyone heard anything about any micro-code update for this drive model??? We have a whole slew of HP Vectra VL400's and we are having drive failures like no tomorrow. 20 to 30% out of some 550 PC's so far -

This model of drive was one of the very last on the shelves when the Quantum hard drive division was sold to Maxtor. My guess is that the Quantum QC dept. was axed first. Quantum used to be my favorite drive.

I've searched the Maxtor site as well as the current Quantum site and the HP support sites and the only thing I have come up with is an upgrade to the IDE drivers used on the HP system.

We get a lot of blue screens and emulator lock-ups we cannot explain. We replace the HD with a western digital and everything starts working just fine. But that isn't an option for all the PC's.

We are trying the new IDE driver - but I still have to wonder if it isn't a micro-code problem of some sort -

[otheos]

Are you talking about the AS+?

The AS+ was a very nice and fast drive. It was identical to the LM+ (the greatest IDE drive of all times :)) apart from the platter density (20GB/platter) and predecessor to the D740X (now a Maxtor) with even greater density (40GB/platter).

Not a great market success but as far as I know a solid drive. You may have better luck at storagereviews forums.

[Axel]

sorry - a bit off there - yes - I'm talking about the Quantum Fireball Plus AS drive - specifically 20.5GB in size - the last model put out by the Quantum Hard Drive division before it was sold to and absorbed by the Maxtor hard drive company.

I've got some 112 bad drives on the west coast a few in the east and some in Tampa -

Some of you may have been following the problems I was having on my own home PC build - guess what hard drive I was working with on that system -

Anyway - I replaced the hard drive with a western digital 20GB and haven't had a lock-up or spontaneous re-boot since -

Anyway - when HP is sending out replacements - they are all bona fide Maxtor drives - not the Quantum -

there is no firmware patch or problem announcement on this that I have been able to find.

I really hate to say this - but ever since the buy-out announcement was made between Maxtor and Quantum - the Quantum reliability has gone into the toilet

[Axel]

Got a voicemail from the HP representative -

They have closed the case as they haven't replaced a Quantum for us in over 60 days time. They have rubber-stamped the issue as a weird production run error in our batch of drives.

They state that no other major customers have reported this problem in our scope -

I'm a bit suspect because - a - I think we'd gotten all of our failed quantums replaced some 60 days ago - so thats why we haven't had additional failures - and b - I had a private drive not in our production batch that had the same errors.

bottom line - quantum had a bad production run of 20.5GB and possibly 40.5GB drives that had corrupt boot sectors which were unrecoverable.

This is the end of the year - time to close out cases to make your support bonus dollars and/or stats as a support entity.....

The recall calculation was more than the profit margin - i.e. - no recall by maxtor of the bad quantums.

They replaced the drives for us and Quantum hard drive is no more - what remains works for Maxtor now - so this is probably being swept under the rug.

Too bad - Quantum Hard Drive division once made the best in my opinion. If you did buy one - don't use it for your os drive - use it for off-line storage and you won't be disappointed.