particular drive manufacturer over another. Commonly one will say that they have a certain make of drive and it's never failed them and they've tried this other one and they're dying left and right, etc. ad nauseum. subsequently independant consultant. The fact is that, particularly with IDE drives, no matter the manufacturer, it's purely the luck of the draw whether one is blessed with a good production run. I get the feeling that, to cut costs, Hi I would say it is true in general that the luck of the draw is the case but having worked for a computer manufacture, I can tell you that at least one manufacture produced a line of drives that were pure junk. Most of the drives would not last a 36 hour running period ( well, not most but about 30% ). This is way beyond luck of the draw. Being a system manufacture, we worked with the drive manufacture on resolving the problem. It was never resolved to any useful level. We finally switched manufactures but it cost us a lot. The fact is that there are lemons out there, by design. The Segate 225's had a stiction problem that wasn't solved until the end of that products line. The drive we were having problems with were 2 and 4 gig drives. These had a servo information corruption problem ( that by design would always fail over time ). Dwight most manufacturers have the QC people working a couple of days a week, and even then they're not exactly the best paid position in the sweatshop. The same goes for cars - you just find the one you're psychologically comfortable with. No bearing on statistical reality, but to the buyer that manufacturer's product will always be superior, and faults will be more tolerable than those of the manufacturer who's product is "in the doghouse" for whatever reason. we asked for. We wanted cheap computing, we got cheap computing. If they raised their standards and correspondingly their prices, we'd run like heck to the next guy who offered their system for a couple of quid less. If you want a rock-solid system with total manufacturer's support and guaranteed uptime and all that jazz, you'd have to shell out over $50,000 plus support contracts, etc. Just like in the old days of some of the larger systems we discuss on this forum. Just my $12.34 (Like everything else here in Bermuda, my opinion has to be shipped here and customs duty paid <grin>).