Fujitsu messed up its own hard drives

DISTRESSED WE WERE to hear of hard drive failure rates of up to 86 per cent in the school district in Britsh Columbia. The poor mites.

People were banging their heads against Fujitsu's brick wall trying to get an explantion for the massive failures rates, so, "Eva," I said to myself, "time to investigate."

And sure enough, having extended our feelers, a new friend from Fujitsu's German partner came forward to enlighten us of the cause of the failures and, indeed, produce some dates between which Fujitsu seemed to turn out duff drives.

"The reason," said our friend, "is the the housing material of the controller chip". He added that the compound of the material was changed in an attempt to improve the drive's protection against fire. He said he believed phosphor was added to the mix. Quite why, indeed, I couldn't ascertain. Whatever the belief, the change was disastrous.

Siemens, said our friend, had also used the MPG3xx-HDD in some of its "industrial" PCs. "After a period and in summertime," he rasped, "die fault rate from field rises up to 15 per cent peak, from production date HDD march 01 and peak up to 70 per cent at single customers."

Hey, I liked the guy's rough Germanic tones, but sheesh! Up to 70 per cent failure rate at some customers' premises. No wonder they were miffed.

Fujitsu, he said, coughed that any MPG3xx drives produced between September 2000 and March 2001 could be suspect.

So there it is. Fujitsu coughed to its own error, after all. But only, it seems, to its mates. µ

See also
Phosphorus compound failure could affect millions of chips
Warburton socks it to Fujitsu over hard drives
Fujitsu responds to hard drive failures
Fujitsu, other HDD makers get thoroughly good kicking