I've exchanged a few messages with united.colo (http://www.unitedcolo.com/) and asked the details about the Celeron 1.7 GHz server asking how many times they have been offline/down in the last six months and a few other things about the service.
When I got my reply I also asked what IBM model drive they used in their servers as well as what version of RedHat came installed - they said the drive was EIDE 7200RPM when I meant exactly what kind of IBM drive..

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you for your interest in our company. We had one brief outage this Monday (~ 30 minutes) due to the slapper worm virus that infected most of our Linux boxes. This worm flooded our network with useless UDP packets.


Best Regards,


Customer Support Team
United Colocation Group
www.unitedcolo.com





At 12:11 AM 10/5/2002 -0500, you wrote:

I run free web space service at www.ghs20.com - this is allowed correct?
I was using www.rackshack.net (terrible) for a while and now they have had so much downtime and problems with my server I gave up and transferred all the user information to a server I'm running right next to me on my ADSL internet connection :O

I may also be purchasing more servers as I expand in to the paid web hosting business.


May I ask how many times your service has been down in the last six months?


Thank you, I look forward to a good future with you....so long as I get a reply to this e-mail faster than the RackShack service, who strive to answer messages within 3 or 4 years.

I got a reply just a few minutes later which I really liked, as ServerBeach took a week to reply when I asked about their service!

Hi Jonathan,

We use both IBM and Seagate hard drive -- depending on availability of supply. As for RedHat, the default in 7.3.


Best Regards,


Customer Support Team
United Colocation Group
www.unitedcolo.com



At 01:19 AM 10/5/2002 -0500, you wrote:

Thank you for the fast reply! I have one last question - what is the harddrive model and version of RedHat that would be used?

Availability of supply - that's understandable:)

Hi Jonathan,

We only use EIDE 7200RPM.


Best Regards,


Customer Support Team
United Colocation Group
www.unitedcolo.com




At 01:51 AM 10/5/2002 -0500, you wrote:

I'm sorry I mean what kind of IBM drives do you use.

Very helpful:rolleyes:

Hi Jonathan,

Sorry, but we don't have the detailed information about the model.


Best Regards,


Customer Support Team
United Colocation Group
www.unitedcolo.com




At 03:47 PM 10/5/2002 -0500, you wrote:

yes, I know you use the EIDE 7200 RPM drives, but you failed to leave out the more important part, the model. What model of the IBM drive(s) will be provided in the server(s) I plan to purchase. Just saying "IBM" and "7200" doesn't help me.

I've heard only bad things about IBM drives, this is the only reason I ask - I would hate to have the harddrive crash and lose all of my members data.

WHAT?! :eek:

Hi Jonathan,

Most of our customers are quite pleased with their IBM hard drive. You're the first to express concern. Perhaps you might be interested in co-locating your own server with a different drive with UCG?


Best Regards,


Customer Support Team
United Colocation Group
www.unitedcolo.com






At 08:33 PM 10/5/2002 -0500, you wrote:

This makes me very weary of your service if you do not know specific details about your server hardware. Is there any option that allows me to specify this servers drive?

I think that's just what I need..more downtime while I ship the server to them - mind you I asked about ready waiting dedicated server.


I've seen various complaints about united.colo group, but you can really expect that as everybody has different experiences with all companies..I was wondering if anybody would know about the IBM drives they use? Or if I may have a detailed look on your server which you have purchased from them.


Thanks;)

Originally posted by Spaceman
I was wondering if anybody would know about the IBM drives they use?

Ours has a ST360021A (http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/ata/st360021a.html) in it.

[Edit: Found some reviews (http://www.sysopt.com/userreviews/harddrive/reviewhtml/Seagate_Barracuda_ATA_IV_ST360021A.html) here.]

Cheers

Gary

doesn't sound too good from some of those reviews:uhh:

Have you considered the possibilities that:

1. They buy servers ready built? Perhaps they don't have the exact specs to hand.
2. They rent servers?

To be honest I think the response was fair, I can see why you asked the question but the sales staff could have to go to a lot of trouble to check (even though they may always use different ones)... Let's not forget this is a host cutting the Rackshack method in half - I wouldn't expect everything.

thank you for your reply cow, and opinions:)

Terry is probably right. If they buy their servers from another company they probably do not have an exact model for the hard drives, because it may vary from batch to batch --

Originally posted by Spaceman
I've exchanged a few messages with united.colo (http://www.unitedcolo.com/) and asked the details about the Celeron 1.7 GHz server asking how many times they have been offline/down in the last six months and a few other things about the service.
When I got my reply I also asked what IBM model drive they used in their servers as well as what version of RedHat came installed - they said the drive was EIDE 7200RPM when I meant exactly what kind of IBM drive..



I got a reply just a few minutes later which I really liked, as ServerBeach took a week to reply when I asked about their service!



Availability of supply - that's understandable:)



Very helpful:rolleyes:



WHAT?! :eek:



I think that's just what I need..more downtime while I ship the server to them - mind you I asked about ready waiting dedicated server.


I've seen various complaints about united.colo group, but you can really expect that as everybody has different experiences with all companies..I was wondering if anybody would know about the IBM drives they use? Or if I may have a detailed look on your server which you have purchased from them.


Thanks;)


i like the ibm deskstars very quiet and stable hard drives. A combination of like a maxtor and a wd (the good side of a wd like how quiet they are)...just my 2 cents

I got caught up in the h*stm*n** mess, and haven't been around this forum much since then. My first try at getting a dedicated server :mad: :bawling: Well, I've got a chargeback under way...

Anyway, I come back and I find - this! $49/month! Woot! And some people seem to be actually getting them!

I've ordered mine - with no setup fee, it's too good to resist. 100GB/month is fine for me at the moment, and I can up it to 500GB when I need it.

Well, fingers (arms, legs, eyes) crossed.

By the way, IBM IDE drives aren't supported for 24x7 operation. This is actually stated on the drive's data sheet. I've had a whole bunch of failures on the GXP75 drives (I've used about 25 of them, had at least 5 failures). Kind of hoping my box will have a Seagate :rolleyes: