the myth of cheap hardware
created: Sun Mar 5 16:59:39 2006last mod: Tue Mar 14 12:59:05 2006
The myth is: computer hardware is cheap now, so even if it's less reliable it's ok, because you design your system for redundancy, and when a system fails you just chuck it out and plug in a new one.
The problem is, the cost of hardware is an insignificant part of running a computer system.
You have a bad drive.
You think you have a bad drive. Not sure. Something is wrong. Could be that cheap motherboard, too. Excercise the drive. Crap, the system froze. The cheap system still cost $1200. OK. Chuck the drive. Seems to be OK now. Wait, the other drive is dead. Or is it?
See, the myth of cheap hardware is a myth because hardware (cheap) is not that cheap. It's not 5 times cheaper, it's half the price, or 3/4. And it's not just slightly less reliable, it's a good deal less reliable.
From now on, I buy the good stuff.
the myth of cheap hardware is filed under sysadmin (10) computer (50) .