Discussion:
What is best hard drive for Linux?
(too old to reply)
Thomas H. George
2004-01-03 16:10:10 UTC
Permalink
I just replaced a hard drive. Thinking this a routine choice I bought
the one with a big rebate, namely Western Digital. I wasn.t too upset
that the installation CD was only for Windows and Macintosh but I was
shocked to find the following message at the bottom of the installation
instructions:

Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.

followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I proceeded
to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and have not
noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What should I
buy next time?

Tom
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GCS
2004-01-03 16:30:11 UTC
Permalink
Post by Thomas H. George
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I proceeded
to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and have not
noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing?
All I can remember that some old win$ os-es (fe win$98) switched off
too soon either the machine or the disk that it could not really write
out data from it's (big) cache. Also, they may refer to the SMART
capability of the drive, meaning one os which can not monitor it, may
not warn you in time that the disk is going to be fault. No other idea
beyond those.
Post by Thomas H. George
What should I
buy next time?
I have a lot of different IDE and SCSI dics under Linux: Quantum,
Western Digital, Fujitsu, Seagate, IBM, Compay, you name it. Never had
any problems with them...

Cheers,
GCS
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Craig Jackson
2004-01-03 17:00:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by GCS
Post by Thomas H. George
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I proceeded
to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and have not
noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing?
All I can remember that some old win$ os-es (fe win$98) switched off
too soon either the machine or the disk that it could not really write
out data from it's (big) cache. Also, they may refer to the SMART
capability of the drive, meaning one os which can not monitor it, may
not warn you in time that the disk is going to be fault. No other idea
beyond those.
Post by Thomas H. George
What should I
buy next time?
I have a lot of different IDE and SCSI dics under Linux: Quantum,
Western Digital, Fujitsu, Seagate, IBM, Compay, you name it. Never had
any problems with them...
Cheers,
GCS
Yes, hard drives are not an issue old or new: seagate,maxtor,western
digital, fujitsu.
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Russ Schneider
2004-01-03 16:40:12 UTC
Permalink
Post by Thomas H. George
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
...followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
Why would they say such a thing? What should I buy next time?
I wouldn't worry about it. I've been using Western Digital harddrives
with Linux systems for a year and a half without a single problem with
Mandrake 8.2, 9.1, and now with Woody; a total of 4 different hard drives
actually.

Why would they say that? Just because of liability. They figure they can
"trust" MS and Mac because they're companies they can seek "answers" from
in case of problems. "Linux" is a big vague monster to most people (which
is why MS can't kill it so easily).

Basically what they're saying is you have no recourse against them if you
lose data put there using Linux.

Again, I've never known anyone to have a problem with WD HDs and Linux.
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Antonio Rodriguez
2004-01-03 16:50:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by Thomas H. George
I just replaced a hard drive. Thinking this a routine choice I bought
the one with a big rebate, namely Western Digital. I wasn.t too upset
that the installation CD was only for Windows and Macintosh but I was
shocked to find the following message at the bottom of the installation
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
I would say: don't worry about that crap. Western Digital has always
worked for me. I have had bad luck with Maxtors. They sell cheaper
than WD, the computer stores say that is better than WD, but it is not
my experience.
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Nate Duehr
2004-01-03 19:00:19 UTC
Permalink
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:06 America/Denver, Thomas H. George
Post by Thomas H. George
I just replaced a hard drive. Thinking this a routine choice I
bought the one with a big rebate, namely Western Digital. I wasn.t
too upset that the installation CD was only for Windows and Macintosh
but I was shocked to find the following message at the bottom of the
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I
proceeded to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and
have not noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What
should I buy next time?
Tom
I wouldn't worry about it Tom. Sounds like a clueless person is in
charge of paranoia at WD. I have WD, Maxtor, Seagate, and even a few
(shudder...) Quantum drives in the server farms I've worked on and also
here at the house. They all work fine.

It's just the idiot lawyers and project managers at WD wanting to have
a disclaimer for no good reason. Maybe a good reason to not buy WD is
that they are showing their ignorance of how their disks are used,
after seeing that, but the drives themselves work fine with Linux or
anything else I've ever tried them with.

As far as hardware-reliability goes, the Maxtor's fail quickly if not
kept cool, Quantums fail way before their "time" and are the worst
brand of drive I've ever encountered, the WD's last a nice long time,
and the Seagate's are incredible... I have eight year old Seagate
drives still spinning in various servers with zero problems. All of
the above, the typical failure mode is the loss of the drive bearings,
complete with plenty of warning as they start to "whine" prior to dying.

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Alvin Oga
2004-01-03 21:20:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by Nate Duehr
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:06 America/Denver, Thomas H. George
Post by Thomas H. George
I just replaced a hard drive. Thinking this a routine choice I
bought the one with a big rebate, namely Western Digital. I wasn.t
too upset that the installation CD was only for Windows and Macintosh
but I was shocked to find the following message at the bottom of the
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I
proceeded to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and
have not noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What
should I buy next time?
Tom
I wouldn't worry about it Tom. Sounds like a clueless person is in
aint paranoia great ??

be really scared if the disk says...
hey, you're installing linux,,, go away.... and it shuts
itself down ( trivial to do in actuallity )

and simillarly for running linux off cdrom ... if the mb/bios
folks wanna get equally stupidly paranoid

( howto do it should be a firmware-1 lab experiment )
Post by Nate Duehr
charge of paranoia at WD. I have WD, Maxtor, Seagate, and even a few
(shudder...) Quantum drives in the server farms I've worked on and also
here at the house. They all work fine.
It's just the idiot lawyers and project managers at WD wanting to have
a disclaimer for no good reason. Maybe a good reason to not buy WD is
that they are showing their ignorance of how their disks are used,
after seeing that, but the drives themselves work fine with Linux or
anything else I've ever tried them with.
its to prevent .... "help, linux doesnt work with linux" support calls,
and emails

wd disks are picky about tis cables and jumper settings

nothing to worry abut ... but people do need to able to use the
right cables and jumper settings
- single master disk on the right connector ( end of the cable )
with the jumper set accordingly
- master and slave ... master at the end of the cable
with the jumper set accordingly

- cable select on the jumber setting..
- your master disk based on the cable is the one on the
end

- slave only on the cable ...
no jumper setting ... shoot yourself

- dont mix the cable around ... motherboard sides belongs to the
motherboard and NOT the disks
- some disks are picky about which end is which
Post by Nate Duehr
As far as hardware-reliability goes, the Maxtor's fail quickly if not
kept cool, Quantums fail way before their "time" and are the worst
brand of drive I've ever encountered, the WD's last a nice long time,
and the Seagate's are incredible... I have eight year old Seagate
all disks fails if not kept coool...

if you can feel the disk being warm ... its too hot for good data
reliability...
- stick a $5.oo fan to protect the disk against heat
( its your data and your time if and when the disk fail )
Post by Nate Duehr
drives still spinning in various servers with zero problems. All of
the above, the typical failure mode is the loss of the drive bearings,
complete with plenty of warning as they start to "whine" prior to dying.
some disks are guaranteed for 3 yrs... some for 5 yrs.. some for 1 yr...
and depends on their rma policy and the rma dude yoou're talking to
if you can get a replacement ofr a failed/bad disks
- its 10x cheaper to buy a new one ..

- usually everybody(WD,maxtor,dell,gatway,etc) recycle returned
items to other people as a warranty replacment

c ya
alvin
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Pigeon
2004-01-04 14:00:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by Nate Duehr
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:06 America/Denver, Thomas H. George
Post by Thomas H. George
I just replaced a hard drive. Thinking this a routine choice I
bought the one with a big rebate, namely Western Digital. I wasn.t
too upset that the installation CD was only for Windows and Macintosh
but I was shocked to find the following message at the bottom of the
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I
proceeded to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and
have not noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What
should I buy next time?
Tom
I wouldn't worry about it Tom. Sounds like a clueless person is in
charge of paranoia at WD. I have WD, Maxtor, Seagate, and even a few
(shudder...) Quantum drives in the server farms I've worked on and also
here at the house. They all work fine.
It's just the idiot lawyers and project managers at WD wanting to have
a disclaimer for no good reason. Maybe a good reason to not buy WD is
that they are showing their ignorance of how their disks are used,
after seeing that, but the drives themselves work fine with Linux or
anything else I've ever tried them with.
As far as hardware-reliability goes, the Maxtor's fail quickly if not
kept cool, Quantums fail way before their "time" and are the worst
brand of drive I've ever encountered, the WD's last a nice long time,
and the Seagate's are incredible... I have eight year old Seagate
drives still spinning in various servers with zero problems. All of
the above, the typical failure mode is the loss of the drive bearings,
complete with plenty of warning as they start to "whine" prior to dying.
I've heard stories of Seagate being a bit iffy, and have just bought a
replacement for a 3-year-old Seagate which started to screech like a
demented chimpanzee. I had a choice between Maxtor and Fujitsu for the
replacement, and chose Fujitsu.

I've got several WD drives and they are all old but solid. The only trouble
I've ever had with them is that sometimes they object to sharing an IDE
cable with a non-WD drive.

I'm intrigued by the drive having an installation CD with it. What was on
it? You sometimes needed to load EZ-Drive or Disk Manager off a floppy in
the days when the half-gig limit was a problem, but I haven't come across
anything like that recently.
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Paul Morgan
2004-01-04 15:10:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by Pigeon
I'm intrigued by the drive having an installation CD with it. What was on
it? You sometimes needed to load EZ-Drive or Disk Manager off a floppy in
the days when the half-gig limit was a problem, but I haven't come across
anything like that recently.
Maxtor, for example, provides an installation CD with the drive checking
tools and something for doing drive-to-drive copies in case you are
replacing a drive (remember that most people replacing drives will be
non-geek PC users, prolly running one of those dastardly MS O/S's).
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Andy Firman
2004-01-04 15:50:08 UTC
Permalink
Post by Paul Morgan
Post by Pigeon
I'm intrigued by the drive having an installation CD with it. What was on
it? You sometimes needed to load EZ-Drive or Disk Manager off a floppy in
the days when the half-gig limit was a problem, but I haven't come across
anything like that recently.
Maxtor, for example, provides an installation CD with the drive checking
tools and something for doing drive-to-drive copies in case you are
replacing a drive (remember that most people replacing drives will be
non-geek PC users, prolly running one of those dastardly MS O/S's).
I just got a brand new WD 40GB drive.

The CD that came with it is called:

"Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools Version 11.0"

It has 2 programs. Drive Installation and Diagnostics.

For Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98SE only.

If Windows is installed, use this CD to setup your harddrive.
If Windows is not installed, boot from this CD.

No Windows here so I booted from CD to see what happens.

It starts Caldera DR-DOS.

Then it comes to a menu:
1. Run Data Lifeguard
2. Create Data Lifeguard Bootable Diskette
3. Create Data Lifeguard Diagnostics Bootable Diskette
4. Quit

I chose 1 and the program started and was basically a tutorial
for physically installing a hard drive.

Then it brought me to the main menu with 5 choices:

1. Install tutorial
(self explanatory)

2. Setup your hard drive
This one allows you to completely erase your disk.

3. Maint. options
This allows you to create bootdisk, update MBR boot code,
and also backup or restore MBR

4. Utilites
This allows you to copy a partition or set hard drive size.

5. Hard drive info
This shows you either technical hard drive info or view
hard drive jumper settings.

Noting exciting. Most people on this list could just use a Knoppix CD
to accomplish most anything.

-Andy
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Paul Johnson
2004-01-03 19:30:21 UTC
Permalink
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Post by Thomas H. George
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I proceeded
to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and have not
noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What should I
buy next time?
Western Digital. I trust them, TiVo trusts them (my TiVo has a 30GB
Western Digital in it, TiVo set-top boxen run Linux on what is
essnetially an Apple Mac LCIII).

- --
.''`. Paul Johnson <***@ursine.ca>
: :' :
`. `'` proud Debian admin and user
`- Debian - when you have better things to do than fix a system
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Kevin Mark
2004-01-04 01:50:11 UTC
Permalink
Post by Paul Johnson
Post by Thomas H. George
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I proceeded
to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and have not
noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What should I
buy next time?
Western Digital. I trust them, TiVo trusts them (my TiVo has a 30GB
Western Digital in it, TiVo set-top boxen run Linux on what is
essnetially an Apple Mac LCIII).
Hi Paul,
I had one of those! Are you saying its a 68030 25mhz processor?
I'd like to see an LCIII do 30fps video!
-Kev
Katipo
2004-01-03 20:50:10 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 11:06:05 -0500
Post by Thomas H. George
I just replaced a hard drive. Thinking this a routine choice I
bought the one with a big rebate, namely Western Digital. I wasn.t
too upset that the installation CD was only for Windows and Macintosh
but I was shocked to find the following message at the bottom of the
Operating Systems Supported
WARNING!
Using an operating system not listed below could result in data loss.
followed by a list of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
If I had known this I would never have purchased the Western Digital
drive and, needless to say, I will never purchase another. I
proceeded to format it with ext2 partitions using my Debian CD's and
have not noticed any problems. Why would they say such a thing? What
should I buy next time?
Hello Tom,

Your drive will work fine with GNU/Linux.
Don't take any notice of the 'recommendations', money is generally
involved.
I use W.D., Seagate, and Maxtor drives - no problems.
I haven't tried Fujitsu yet, apparently they are good also.
Regards,

David.
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