On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Lance R. Bailey wrote:
i ran into the same problem with [i believe] the cheetah 18G drives. i later found the insignificant little piece of paper stating that there might be a problem if you didn't download the latest disk defs.
I ran into this in a slightly different fashion a couple of years back and it almost made me toss the filer into the bay. I had ordered and received a box full of new disk drives for one of the filers and the drives very nicely had big red stickers on them saying "you must use version x.x". I dutifully went to the NOW site to download the software and was not able to do so. I called up to complain and was told that I was not allowed to download the new version because the maintenance had expired. I explained that I needed the new version because I had purchased new drives and they required the new version but the only response I got was "your maintenance is expired". I had to call my saleman and threaten to stop doing business with NetApp before they allowed me to download the software.
In the long run I figured out why the maintenance had lapsed and got it reinstated but as you can tell from this email, the experience left a very bad taste. The audacity of selling me new hardware and then refusing to allow me access to the software required to make use of it was almost beyond belief. If I can't make use of the hardware then why the hell did you sell it to me!!