On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:

> You should consider Western Digital as well.  Often, a particular model of
> Western Digital is the SAME drive that you get when you buy an IBM drive.  I
> am not sure what sort of deal they have, but it seems there is a bit of
> overlap with respect to hardware between IBM and Western Digital.  I think
> the overlap is the WD Caviar drives.  I have been using these and they seem
> to run forever (knock on wood).

That's odd, I've never heard of this before.  I've had more than my share
of bad WD drives so I instantly cringe at the thought of putting a WD in
my machine.  Is this pretty standard among drive models (model #241-34520
or whatever will always be an IBM) or is it kind of random? ("hey Bob,
what are we putting in here THIS week?")

The thing is, an additional $30/$40 for a drive is well worth it to me to
know what's inside my drive.  Especially if it means the difference
between overnighting a new one and restoring the data, $40 seems a small
price to pay for 1 day of down time and shipping a new one.

-Brian