RE: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

RE: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

[Williams, Gerald S (Jerry)]

Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
> I've had this happen several times with standalone DVD players.  It
> has nothing to do with amount of use or anything else AFAICT.

This was especially a problem with certain Sony DVD players.
Apparently they ran them too hot and used cheaper components
that they were hoping will make it past the warranty period
(although even if they don't, they charge you more money in
"handling" than a new player would cost). I think this was
especially a problem during the first round of price cuts in
DVD players (when they went from ~$750 to ~$250), since the
older 700-series Sony models were generally considered the
quintessential DVD players at the time.

There have been ongoing efforts to create class-action suits
against Sony for quite a few years now. I'm hoping one will
stick so I can get something back for the one I bought that
lasted less than a year.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that other players have
similar issues, but (knock on wood) the cheap JVC player I
bought to replace my Sony with has been doing pretty well so
far. As far as PC drives are concerned, I don't know if I've
ever kept the same DVD drive in a PC for more than 2 years.
:-)

gsw

Re: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

[Lloeki]

On 15/05/06, Williams, Gerald S (Jerry) <gsw@agere.com> wrote:

> I've had this happen several times with standalone DVD players.  It
> has nothing to do with amount of use or anything else AFAICT.
>

Most casual consumer IDE cd/dvd recorders are engineered to handle
around 1'000 recordings. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure,
STFWikipedia) of anything from cars to dishwashers is a Big Secret in
the industry, but expect it to be just past the announced warranty,
especially for low-end hardware. All these values are statistical
though, so one might just fail at once when another might just last
thrice the MTBF.

RE: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

[Dave Korn]

On 15 May 2006 17:48, Lloeki wrote:

> On 15/05/06, Williams, Gerald S (Jerry) <gsw@agere> wrote:
> 
>> I've had this happen several times with standalone DVD players.  It
>> has nothing to do with amount of use or anything else AFAICT.
>> 
> 
> Most casual consumer IDE cd/dvd recorders are engineered to handle
> around 1'000 recordings. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure,
> STFWikipedia) of anything from cars to dishwashers is a Big Secret in
> the industry, but expect it to be just past the announced warranty,
> especially for low-end hardware. All these values are statistical
> though, so one might just fail at once when another might just last
> thrice the MTBF.

  Yeh, my experiences tally with what everyone's said: if a cheap cd/dvd drive starts to conk out after only a couple of years, or even less if you've been doing lots of heavy burning sessions[*], it's not surprising.

  It's down to the increasing use of low-cost mass manufacturing techniques.  And I guess it's not so bad if a burner costs forty bucks and lasts two years, but these new low manufacturing standards seem to have been applied across the board as the prices of peripherals have fallen over the years.

  Hard-drives used to be precision-engineered instruments: the one I bought for my Amiga in 1991 worked fine until 1999 without a single lost sector... then I decided to 'upgrade' it (I had almost filled up the whole 20meg :-D LOL) with a brand new WD (IIRC), and within 6 months the whole thing had died with a bearing failure[****].  Now, I know about keeping backups, but even so, I want a HD that lasts a LONG time.  And I am not happy with the new trend that you should expect and be prepared for your drive to crash catastrophically within the 6-24 months timespan.  But that's all you can safely expect from them these days.  How would you feel if all the CDs you burned got wiped when the burner conked out?


    cheers,
      DaveK

[*]     - Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum![**]
[**]    - Huh?  What?  Whatcha mean?  I'm just doing my bit to fight global warming[***], you suspicious-minded individual!
[***]   - http://www.venganza.org/piratesarecool4.jpg - RAmen!
[****]  - The most horrible noise in the world is that <GRAUNCH> you hear when your HD spins up that tells you you've got crushed balls all over your platter[*****] once again!
[*****] - </innocent> What?  What, already?  Sheesh, get off my case![+]
[+]     - My asterisk key just broke[++].
[++]    - Goddam' cheap mass-manufactured asterisk keys <grmbl grmbl...> back in my day you could type asterisks all day long and they'd never fail ... <mutter mutter>...
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....

Re: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

[Robert Pendell]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Dave Korn wrote:
> On 15 May 2006 17:48, Lloeki wrote:
> 
>> On 15/05/06, Williams, Gerald S (Jerry) <gsw@agere> wrote:
>>
>>> I've had this happen several times with standalone DVD players.  It
>>> has nothing to do with amount of use or anything else AFAICT.
>>>
>> Most casual consumer IDE cd/dvd recorders are engineered to handle
>> around 1'000 recordings. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure,
>> STFWikipedia) of anything from cars to dishwashers is a Big Secret in
>> the industry, but expect it to be just past the announced warranty,
>> especially for low-end hardware. All these values are statistical
>> though, so one might just fail at once when another might just last
>> thrice the MTBF.
> 
>   Yeh, my experiences tally with what everyone's said: if a cheap cd/dvd drive starts to conk out after only a couple of years, or even less if you've been doing lots of heavy burning sessions[*], it's not surprising.
> 
>   It's down to the increasing use of low-cost mass manufacturing techniques.  And I guess it's not so bad if a burner costs forty bucks and lasts two years, but these new low manufacturing standards seem to have been applied across the board as the prices of peripherals have fallen over the years.
> 
>   Hard-drives used to be precision-engineered instruments: the one I bought for my Amiga in 1991 worked fine until 1999 without a single lost sector... then I decided to 'upgrade' it (I had almost filled up the whole 20meg :-D LOL) with a brand new WD (IIRC), and within 6 months the whole thing had died with a bearing failure[****].  Now, I know about keeping backups, but even so, I want a HD that lasts a LONG time.  And I am not happy with the new trend that you should expect and be prepared for your drive to crash catastrophically within the 6-24 months timespan.  But that's all you can safely expect from them these days.  How would you feel if all the CDs you burned got wiped when the burner conked out?
> 
> 
>     cheers,
>       DaveK
> 

I've had a hard drive die 9 months after I got it.  It was a full 200GB
WD drive too.  It had alot of music and disc images that I either had to
relocate or redo because it so I lost alot of time over it.  Luckily I
got it at Newegg so I got a free replacement.  The replacement has been
working fine since so I think it was just a fluke.  I also have a
Seagate running in a Firewire HD enclosure that can get really hot.
Surprised that it doesn't just fry in there because there is virtually
no air circulation for that thing.  I really need to setup a raid setup
for my [private/lan] ftp server...

- --
Robert Pendell
shinji257@uplink.net

Thawte Web of Trust Notary
CAcert Assurer
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFEaOP9NqnRaBCOmrYRAi94AJ9JWkQU3Emm29sGQm4WS8sTnIT90wCgkzsG
XE0x1IcBLq1oGx0Is1WyWwg=
=fr/2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

[zzapper]

 seem to be jinxed with CD/DVD drives I get about 2 years out of them is 
that uncommon or is a case of hippo dung getting into bearings

-- 
http://successtheory.com/tips/ Vim, Zsh, MySQL Tips

RE: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

[Gary R. Van Sickle]

I've had this happen several times with standalone DVD players.  It has
nothing to do with amount of use or anything else AFAICT.

-- 
Gary R. Van Sickle
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-talk-owner@cygwin.com 
> [mailto:cygwin-talk-owner@cygwin.com] On Behalf Of zzapper
> Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 3:55 PM
> To: cygwin-talk@cygwin.com
> Subject: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)
> 
>  seem to be jinxed with CD/DVD drives I get about 2 years out 
> of them is that uncommon or is a case of hippo dung getting 
> into bearings
> 
> --
> http://successtheory.com/tips/ Vim, Zsh, MySQL Tips
>