Re: OEM Disk Drives

[Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve,

Face them and back away slowly, do not let them out of your sight (or
into your site!)

Within the last 6 months we have had two customers purchase these
against our recommendations and both have had problems. One STILL has
performance issues and CPF messages being issued despite the drive being
replaced twice.  The other had to get 10 drives in before we could get 4
to spin up at once!!! (He could NOT have slept well this weekend with
60+MPH wind gusts here)

PLUS you gotta sign a document and send it to IBM that you have NON-IBM
stuff in your box and in it promise to remove the non-IBM stuff should
IBM think it the cause of a failure.  Add to this that you pay IBM for
maintenance on the machine by Drive Cage (so your maintenance goes up)
but you GET maintenance from the drive vendor (which MAY be IBM but not
on Your contract) which means you have to call THEM and THEY call IBM.

Sure the vendors tell you that these are really IBM drives so whats the
difference? They DON't have IBM Microcode. You CANNOT send PTFs to these
drives. You MUST check with the vendor before EVERY OS/400 AND PTF load
because if they haven't tested them (see customer 'A' above) you might
have problems possibly as severe as drives that disappear.

I cannot think of a valid argument for putting these into my system.

 my .02

  - Larry

now if you wanna go back a year or two I got some REAL horror
stories.....

Steve Glanstein wrote:
> 
> Hello all:
> 
> Question cam up about non=IBM disk drives. Anybody with RECENT experience?
> 
> Steve Glanstein
> mic@aloha.com

-- 
Larry Bolhuis           | Cogito Ergo Vendo iSeries 
Arbor Solutions, Inc.   |
(616) 451-2500          |               (I think, therefore I buy iSeries.)
(616) 451-2571 -fax     |
lbolhuis@arbsol.com     |        #3  1951-2001
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