by Anton Shilov
09/16/2002 | 08:23 AM
It seems that data-storage business now became the most complex, but rather unprofitable. IBM sold their HDD subsidiary, Quantum was acquired by Maxtor and Fujitsu simply dropped the business without explaining the reasons. Well, now it seems that not only IBM had loads of problems with their hard disk drives, as The Inquirer reports, Fujitsu is going to recall about 10 million of their HDDs which were manufactured from September 2000 to September 2001 and may go malfunction when operating in conditions with high temperature of the environment.
Unfortunately, the company does not reveal the particular models and series to be recalled, however, it is said that the drives were installed in computers made by NEC, IBM-Japan, Hitachi and Fujitsu itself. The source even does not indicate if such faulty HDDs were shipped outside Japan to the USA and Europe. Now IBM-Japan and NEC offer free technical service and replacement of faulty hard disks to the customers.<%BANNER[article]%>
The replacement of the devices will cost Fujitsu about ¥10 billion or around $81.8 million. Keeping in mind the fact that Fujitsu cancelled its HDD business recently, it was just the right time to stop for them. Unfortunately, it is the general trend which shows that the new hard disk drives are not as reliable as HDDs manufactured 5 or 6 years ago.