Dell HDD's Or Bust

[n2ize]

Apparently in its new high end servers Dell has crippled them to use ONLY Dell approved HDD's.

This may be a common practice in the "IT" world but it strikes me as rather draconian. If I buy a machine I should be able to install the drives I chose, "positive user experience" be damned.

[KG4CGC]

Apparently in its new high end servers Dell has crippled them to use ONLY Dell approved HDD's.

This may be a common practice in the "IT" world but it strikes me as rather draconian. If I buy a machine I should be able to install the drives I chose, "positive user experience" be damned.
I think HP tried something similar a few years back. Has Dell actually DONE anything to improve their quality or are they still riding the wave of hype leftover from, "Dude! You're getting a Dell!"

[n2ize]

Apparently in its new high end servers Dell has crippled them to use ONLY Dell approved HDD's.

This may be a common practice in the "IT" world but it strikes me as rather draconian. If I buy a machine I should be able to install the drives I chose, "positive user experience" be damned.
I think HP tried something similar a few years back. Has Dell actually DONE anything to improve their quality or are they still riding the wave of hype leftover from, "Dude! You're getting a Dell!"

Supposedly these are some of there new high end servers. One guy on our local LUG mailing list posted this.He found out the hard way in real time when he tried replacing a drive on one of these machines and it rejected it. Perhaps I could ask him about the overall quality. Just seems kinda of ridiculous for Dell to be doing this nowadays. And I don't see any valid reason given by Dell other than "a more positive experience".

[KG4CGC]

. And I don't see any valid reason given by Dell other than "a more positive experience".
Versus the more negative one they have created?
:rofl:

[n6hcm]

I think HP tried something similar a few years back. Has Dell actually DONE anything to improve their quality or are they still riding the wave of hype leftover from, "Dude! You're getting a Dell!"

compaq (now a part of hp) was notorious for this. i just took delivery of the current generation of this hp server hardware a few months ago and i haven't checked the disks to see what they actually are.

also just took delivery of a dell poweredge r710 system yesterday ... haven't had any time to check it out. i wouldn't be surprised if there were issues like this in the r series hardware--we've already had problems with ram compatability of our r610 systems ...

(we buy dells because it is easy to do ... various purchasing requirements across several different organizations and many different grants mean that dell ends up being our vendor of choice. (the hp hardware was a federal govt purchase).

[n2ize]

One of the biggest issues I have seen over this is that the prices on the Dell approved drives are highly inflated. So not only do you have to use their drives but you pay more for em.

[n6hcm]

One of the biggest issues I have seen over this is that the prices on the Dell approved drives are highly inflated. So not only do you have to use their drives but you pay more for em.
all the vendor-specific drives have overinflated prices. it's because they can.

at least with dell, you can (with the models i have experience with) easily identify the commodity drive in the sled and buy that drive new for less ... then just swap the drive in the sled and you're good to go. getting sleds to match your chassis may be tougher but these are generally still available on ebay.