Stupid RAID question

Wed Oct 5 17:57:06 UTC 2011

On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 12:23:32PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> "Scam" is a subjective term.  So let me explain how I see this.
> 
> They are using market segmentation to make more money.  That's fair.
> But as a techie, I like to think of commodity products being sold at
> close to cost, not value.  The value of a RAID-capable disk is higher
> than the value of one that is not RAID-capable.  The cost of providing
> it is essentially identical (or actually lower).

It certainly does not cost _less_.  It may not cost more to produce
either, except that the runs with the raid edition firmware is likely
smaller, shipments to stores are likely in smaller portions, etc.

Now if they just made it a user option like it used to be, then it would
in fact cost them nothing more or less.

> The sign of a monopoly market is a vendor able to capture the value of a 
> product to the customer, not just its cost of production.  Market 
> segmentation is one tool used by vendors to accomplish this more 
> effectively.

Well nvidia sells quadro cards which are the same GPUs as a geforce card,
except they turn off a couple of features on the geforce line and use
much better tested drivers for the quadro cards.  And then they charge
5 to 10 times as much for the quadro card.

> From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation
> 
>     The term is also used when consumers with identical product and/or
>     service needs are divided up into groups so they can be charged
>     different amounts for the services.
> 
> The cost of having a TLER option in the firmware is essentially $0.
> The cost of having different firmware for identical devices, including
> service cost is more than $0 (perhaps not a lot).  Eliminating this
> option segments the market.
> 
> I use the same drives in different contexts during my ownership.  I'd
> sure like to be able to use a drive for RAID or not whenever I chose
> to do so.

The vast majority of people won't.  I would.  Well actually I think all
my disks would be in raid unless in a USB enclosure.

> WD used to allow this, but no longer.  Hitachi and Samsung still allow
> this (but are going to disappear).  Seagate does not allow this now
> but may have done so in the past.

Yeah it is annoying.

> I'm particularly annoyed at Seagate since they advertised my drive (a
> 7200.11 series) as suitable for "desktop RAID" but provided no way of
> bounding the error recovery time.  When pressed by any particular user
> encountering problems, if they cose to reply at all, they claimed any
> particular configuration was not desktop RAID.  Notice this
> 327-message thread that I started:
> <http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/RAID-problems-with-7200-11-drives-unified-thread/td-p/26989>
> 
> This is on top of the 7200.11 BSY firmware bug which was handled very very
> badly.

Seagate seems to keep screwing up firmware on SATA drives in annoying
ways.  They have been off my list of acceptable drives for years.

> Right, but it is only a tiny aspect of behaviour, quite within the
> realm of tweaking.

Certainly, and it used to be tweakable on a number of drives.

> No, they do it to make more money.
> 
> The fact that they can get away with this clearly demonstrates that
> the market isn't free.  Only a monopoly/oligopoly can get away with
> market segmentation like this.

Well harddisks are amazingly cheap these days.  If they can find a way
to make more money in that market, well good for them.  I doubt the
raid market is large enough for anyone to be super excited to jump in
and compete with them.

> Consider, for another example, how CPU virtualization technology was in essentially
> all AMD chips but only some Intel chips.  My analysis:
> 
> - Intel felt it could force users requiring virtualization to pay more
>   (because they dominated the market).  A sale of a cheap chip, if it
>   had supported virtualization, could be cannibalizing a sale of a
>   more expensive chip

Sure.  Intel's tweaking of features in different chips of the same line
is making things very confusing for consumers.

> - AMD was happy to sell any chips they could.  A cheap chip with
>   virtualization might be displacing an Intel chip.

Yes, much simpler with AMD.

> (So even my cheap-as-dirt AMD-based netbook supports virtualization
> but Intel netbooks and most Intel notebooks don't.)
> 
> Ordinary customers might well want virtualization.  If I
> remember/understand correctly, Win7 supports backwards compatibility
> using virtualization.

Yes, initially windows 7 required it, but then they did an update that
permits it to do it (slightly less efficiently) without the hardware
support.

> |  People that
> | need them will know what they need and get the right one.  Now I would
> | prefer the old method where a software tool or a jumper could change
> | the behaviour, but unfortunately we don't get that option anymore.
> 
> If that were the case, why would Seagate advertise the 7200.11 as
> suitable for "desktop RAID"?
> <http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/desktops/barracuda_hard_drives/barracuda_7200.11>
> 
> With the 7200.12, they don't mention "desktop RAID" but they do
> suggest, without reservations or qualifications:
> 
>     PERFECT WHEN YOU NEED TO:
> 
> 	Build robust workstations
> 	Equip home servers
> 	Create PC-based gaming systems
> 	Implement a desktop RAID
> 	Outfit direct attached external storage devices (DAS)
> 	Build network attached storage devices (NAS)
> 
> No, they are certainly not in it to give a clear understanding of this
> issue to the rubes.

So they advertise it as such, except when people actually do it, it
doesn't work.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
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