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