OT: Common mode failures

[Michael Hipp]

I used to think the idea that two hard drives bought at the same time might be 
likely to fail at nearly the same time was little more than superstition.

Not anymore.

In early 2004 I bought 2 Seagate 36GB SCSI drives for a LAN server for a 
client. In June of this year one of them failed. Today the other one failed. 
Less than 4 months apart in a nearly 5 year timespan.

Seems there might be something to the suggestion to always buy your drives from 
multiple sources or otherwise try getting drives that aren't too close in the 
manufacturing chain.

Just food for thought.

Michael