Tony Duell wrote: Well, if I've got a few hundred megs of data on a hard drive, I'd rather repair a simple electronic fault than have to restore it all from backups. And it would take me lest time to repair such a fault than it would take to ship the replacement drive. -Tony ------------------------------------ Billy - I'll try one last time and then give up. Tony, hard drives rarely rarely have a simple electronic fault. The ratio of mechanical to electrical faults is around 98 to 1. They are so rare that most companies don't repair PCBs. You cannot repair mechanical failures in drives made in the last 25 years without highly specialized equipment. Drives made in the last ten years require Class 10 clean rooms, thanks to flying heights less than the wavelength of visible light. Yes I know you have a few early primitive drives that you fixed in the past. But technology has moved a long long ways from those Paleolithic days. We still repair drives, we still use technicians, but they sure as hell don't use soldering irons, oscilloscopes and schematics. And no, we didn't lose any customers because we stopped providing maintenance manuals. The demand for disk drives soared last year to 376 million units, a 23% jump over the previous year. I know you didn't buy any, and we'll have deal with that loss. But out of the tens of millions we sell every quarter, not a single paying customer asks for documentation other than spec sheets and the fluff manual that is standard today. And none of those customers have the slightest interest in any kind of repair. So tell me - why in the hell should we do something as pointless as provide documentation that will go unused? If you want to influence that SOP, buy some new product and demonstrate the need. Exercise your power by purchase. Otherwise, accept that the rest of the world doesn't like nor want equipment that requires repair. And please stop complaining about the lack of manuals. They ain't gonna happen. The products you like to work on were obsolete before most of our engineers were born. The world isn't going to back up to meet your needs. So why don't you develop new skills and learn how to repair this new equipment? Expand and learn - a lot of us here are older than you and had no trouble adapting to technological change. If you insist on only using trivial Stone Age technology, it's your choice. But you're missing out on equipment many times more exciting and fun to use. There's a place for you at the cutting edge. And you can still have your toys; have your cake and eat it too. And if not, well we'll miss you. Billy