Hard drives and firmware numbers

[JimLeb]

How does one go about purchasing hard drives over the web when they don't list firmware information. Isn't it esential to get a drive with the firmware listed in the "Qualified Drives" information from Digi?

Thanks... Jim

[Steve Rosenthal]

Hi Jim,

The firmware revision issue has always been a little bit of a pain. We can only indicate the revisions that we've actually tested. This does not mean that later firmware revisions (or even earlier ones) won't be okay, but since we haven't tested them, we can't just blanketly "sign off" on them.

If, in the course of a drive's life-cycle, we get reports from the field that seem to be related to drive firmware (exceedingly rare), we will specifically examine that revision to see if there is a problem.

The most common drive related problems we see are directory corruption, bad cabling, bad or improper termination, power supply failures, or catastrophic mechanical or electronics failures (though these are actually fairly rare). All of the above -- with the exception of the catastrophic failures -- are not that hard to fix. They are also pretty easy to avoid if you use reasonable care when configuring your system, abide by a regular maintenece schedule, and keep regular back ups.

So, go ahead and buy mail order, but if you can, get a 30 day money back guarantee -- just in case.

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--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[JimLeb]

Thanks for the quick reply Steve. I'll give it a try.