Can a single item have an inherent fault?

prowla

vicmorrow wrote: »

As you are a computer technician I am a little surprised that you've not come across premature hardware failure and the resulting outcome from the seller.

Hard Disks are the most failure-prone components of computer systems.

Manufacturers usually quote an MTBF (Mean Time Before/Between Failures) to indicate life expectations of disks. The MTBF is really an expectation extrapolated from testing rather than measured in real-life (as the product would otherwise be obsolete before it could come to market).

There is no indication of a minimum time to a failure though, and the fact that a mean is quoted suggests that there will be instances of much shorter times.

It is perfectly possible for an individual item to have a manufacturing defect that shortens its lifetime, and this should be covered in the wording of of the warranty (something like "warrantied against defects in design or manufacture").

bod1467

Just to be a pedant.

MTBF means Mean Time BETWEEN Failures. Not Before - they are not interchangeable. (You're think of MTTF - Mean Time TO Failure).

vicmorrow

bod1467 wrote: »

Just to be a pedant.

MTBF means Mean Time BETWEEN Failures. Not Before - they are not interchangeable. (You're think of MTTF - Mean Time TO Failure).

To be an even bigger pedant it's thinking.

mo786uk

If a refudn is made they can minus soem mone yfor your use - but it iwll prob be a smal lamoutn - there is no official guidance on how much they must refund as it would be too much effort to produce one - just what is reasonable - if you dont agree then you would have to go to court and let a judge decide.

arcon5

mo786uk wrote: »

If a refudn is made they can minus soem mone yfor your use - but it iwll prob be a smal lamoutn - there is no official guidance on how much they must refund as it would be too much effort to produce one - just what is reasonable - if you dont agree then you would have to go to court and let a judge decide.

I think somebody has had too many cherryades

patman99

It wouldn't be an HP laptop by any chance would it ?.
HP's attitude to inherent failures is "we are unaware of any inherent issues with our products" and "we take no notice of multiple web-reports of component failures on given models".

closed

A replacement may have the same hard disk in

damo24

Hi patman99, don't worry, it's an Asus laptop with a Seagate hard drive. I used to work for a company that HP bought out and can safely say I would never have any of their hardware.

I did think of that closed but the Seagate disc tools records the serial number of the hard drive and I included the output of the diagnostics including the serial number in the RMA request so I'm ready if they try that one.

closed

I meant same model, not same physical drive. An inherent fault suggests a design flaw, some hard disks last decades, some don't.

Nilrem

closed wrote: »

I meant same model, not same physical drive. An inherent fault suggests a design flaw, some hard disks last decades, some don't.

Aye, I've got a couple of Samsung 120gb drives here that still work fine after something like 6+ years.
However I also had some that failed in under a year of the same model/batch.