Axel
07-07-2002, 7:22 PM
going into this review - I have to admit a certain bias - I used to only buy Quantum hard drives. I swore by them. They had some of the best stability and install software out there and I never had any trouble with a Quantum until a certain woeful day -
The Quantum hard drive division was sold to Maxtor at about the same time this drive and the 40.5 GB variant went to testing.
I bought the 20.5 GB drive for a home computer build -
It had the 7200 RPM that I came to enjoy along with the onboard 2 MB cache - so speed was top notch for it's time.
As for experience for this drive, I support some 500+ units of HP hardware out in the field that have this drive as standard equipment.
My experience is that something, and I cannot truely define what, was missed in this drive build.
I have seen more blue screens, and lock-ups of multiple operating systems and multiple applications and the only common factor appears to be this drive model.
I've seen this drive running on several different hardware platforms and on the win98se, NT4, and windows 2000 and windows 2000 server operating systems.
Early builds of this drive do appear stable. I have some 140 units with this drive in it on the east coast running 24*7*365 in a call center with no problems, but these were pilot machines and were the first released to us by a vendor. That was circa 2001 - November.
Either something changed, or the drives shipped to the central and west United States are from a different lot, as we have seen over 30% fail over less than a year and are experiencing far more blue-screens and lock-ups on this drive than on replacement drives. Replacements are either seagates, western digitals or bona fide Maxtor drives.
Side note - this issue seems to be larger than initially thought, because the vendor whom my company originally bought the machines from has "stepped to the plate" and will be replacing all the drives on close to 400 machines over the next several months. This is unusual unless the drive cannot be repaired with a firmware patch. I know the vendor and they don't typically step to the plate unless there is no other way.
I have yet to find anything on the Maxtor site about this and the old Quantum site makes no more mention of the drive division it sold off to Maxtor.
My thoughts on the subject is that this drive model was released in the middle of the merger when the Quantum drive division was absorbed by Maxtor. The remaining batch of 20.5GB and 40.5GB quantum drives are suspect at best and I cannot recommend them for use on anything but off-line storage. Definitely do not run an OS on these drives as they , at this point, cannot be rendered stable.
HP has produced a new IDE driver for the systems that were released when this drive model was in production. The ide update appears to reduce the number of errors, but does not totally appear to eliminate them. HP makes no specific mention of the drive on it's support sites and appears to have run out of their stock of this specific drive model. I'm not getting any such replacement drives at work any more.
This drive model was in wide release during the HP Vectra VL400 line which was a short lived model run for business use. Since then, the Vectra VL has moved on to the VL420 model base, and the VL400 is officially manufacturer discontinued.
My admins and techs are requesting that replacement drives not be quantums, but , at the time of this writing, prefer either seagates or bona fide Maxtor drives. We are typically getting Maxtors as warranty replacements.
My Quantum 10.5 and 15GB models appear as solid as ever, and I have every expectation I'll be using them well beyond their expected 5 year life span. As for the 20.5 fireball AS I have - it's in a stattic bag on a shelf - I'll sell it cheap if someone wants to risk it for off-line storage.
I suspect the after market on this drive will be flooded.
If you have need for off-line storage - pick these up cheap - just don't run you OS on it.
The Quantum hard drive division was sold to Maxtor at about the same time this drive and the 40.5 GB variant went to testing.
I bought the 20.5 GB drive for a home computer build -
It had the 7200 RPM that I came to enjoy along with the onboard 2 MB cache - so speed was top notch for it's time.
As for experience for this drive, I support some 500+ units of HP hardware out in the field that have this drive as standard equipment.
My experience is that something, and I cannot truely define what, was missed in this drive build.
I have seen more blue screens, and lock-ups of multiple operating systems and multiple applications and the only common factor appears to be this drive model.
I've seen this drive running on several different hardware platforms and on the win98se, NT4, and windows 2000 and windows 2000 server operating systems.
Early builds of this drive do appear stable. I have some 140 units with this drive in it on the east coast running 24*7*365 in a call center with no problems, but these were pilot machines and were the first released to us by a vendor. That was circa 2001 - November.
Either something changed, or the drives shipped to the central and west United States are from a different lot, as we have seen over 30% fail over less than a year and are experiencing far more blue-screens and lock-ups on this drive than on replacement drives. Replacements are either seagates, western digitals or bona fide Maxtor drives.
Side note - this issue seems to be larger than initially thought, because the vendor whom my company originally bought the machines from has "stepped to the plate" and will be replacing all the drives on close to 400 machines over the next several months. This is unusual unless the drive cannot be repaired with a firmware patch. I know the vendor and they don't typically step to the plate unless there is no other way.
I have yet to find anything on the Maxtor site about this and the old Quantum site makes no more mention of the drive division it sold off to Maxtor.
My thoughts on the subject is that this drive model was released in the middle of the merger when the Quantum drive division was absorbed by Maxtor. The remaining batch of 20.5GB and 40.5GB quantum drives are suspect at best and I cannot recommend them for use on anything but off-line storage. Definitely do not run an OS on these drives as they , at this point, cannot be rendered stable.
HP has produced a new IDE driver for the systems that were released when this drive model was in production. The ide update appears to reduce the number of errors, but does not totally appear to eliminate them. HP makes no specific mention of the drive on it's support sites and appears to have run out of their stock of this specific drive model. I'm not getting any such replacement drives at work any more.
This drive model was in wide release during the HP Vectra VL400 line which was a short lived model run for business use. Since then, the Vectra VL has moved on to the VL420 model base, and the VL400 is officially manufacturer discontinued.
My admins and techs are requesting that replacement drives not be quantums, but , at the time of this writing, prefer either seagates or bona fide Maxtor drives. We are typically getting Maxtors as warranty replacements.
My Quantum 10.5 and 15GB models appear as solid as ever, and I have every expectation I'll be using them well beyond their expected 5 year life span. As for the 20.5 fireball AS I have - it's in a stattic bag on a shelf - I'll sell it cheap if someone wants to risk it for off-line storage.
I suspect the after market on this drive will be flooded.
If you have need for off-line storage - pick these up cheap - just don't run you OS on it.