On Fri, 5 Sep 1997 sirbruce@ix.netcom.com wrote:
I'm not saying this *did* happen, but it's worth noting that if you have "good parts" and "bad parts" together it is possible for the *bad* part to make the *good* part fail...
I've seen that happen many times, especially on a SCSI bus (which can be notorious for phantom errors). In this case, one drive was a narrow 4GB from an F220, and the other was a wide 4GB from an F230. The filers were purchased months apart, and it is unlikely the two drives came off the same production run.
Another possibility - higher performing components will fail faster, generally speaking. Perhaps the Netapp drives provide better performance for lower MTBF (doubtful, but worth mentioning).
Yeah, doubtful. ;-) Our third-party drives were bought to Netapp's specs, down to the firmware revision. The canisters were supplied by OSS, who stock Digital StorageWorks products. The only difference there is the wiring leading to the two LED's on the front cover.