Bad Drives-Best RAM

Kappy wrote:
I doubt Apple is looking for the highest priced memory to put in their computers. Just because they retail the Samsung RAM at twice the price of any third-party vendor doesn't mean that RAM is any better quality. It just means Apple demands a high markup to pay for all the additional overhead associated with selling it - installation, warranty replacements, service fees, system warranty, etc. And, let's not forget the Apple logo.

You'd be wrong. Look at the modules in your Mac Pro vs the average module in the average PC. They are not run of the mill memory modules. That and your Mac Pro isn't a run of the mill PC either, it has more in common with a PC server then the vast majority of PC desktops.

You can buy the same Samsung product on the open market for at least half of what Apple charges.

Does it have a heat sink? Temperature probe? Yes, there is cheaper memory but often there are reasons.

And Apple isn't alway's higher - it was cheaper for me to bump to 8 gigs from the 6 my Mac Pro came with from Apple. If I was going to go higher, I would have went third party.

But heck I would do that with Dell too. Nothing unique to Apple - it's the way the industry works.

In fact I'd argue Apple does sell cheap memory, but they price it very high. Does the name P.T. Barnum ring a bell?

Again, I'm not saying I like it, but it goes for any name-brand computer - be it Apple, Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc. It shouldn't be a surprise...

I have nameless, brandless RAM along with the RAM that came with the computer. They are indistinguishable in all respects. They have heat sinks, temperature probes, etc.

Kappy wrote:
I think from what I've read about SMART that if the SMART status says your drive is failing, then there's an 80-90 % likelihood the drive will fail. If the SMART status says a drive is OK then there's only a 50-60% probability it won't fail. In effect you can trust SMART to tell you the drive is failing.

You can trust SMART details. The summary shown by utilities like Disk Utility should not be trusted. It's been shown that the summaries have been made more optimistic over time by manufacturers.

Unfortunately, you can't trust all manufacturers to enable all or many of the parameters for SMART on their drives, and as Hatter said SMART is only as good as the data provided to it.

All hard drive should have the basics, and if you use a utility like this:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartutility.html

you can get the detailed stats and make an informed decision yourself, instead of relying on some summary of the same parameters. It won't work with drives in a RAID array or on USB or FW of course.

Any items highlighted in RED in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. should be paid close attention to, whether the drive reports itself as failing or not.

My perspective may be different than yours since I used to design hardware. But I don't find it indistinguishable at all. My premium RAM usually has up to two more layers in the PC for ground plane, more capacitors for noise immunity, heavier plating on the foil and a better soldering job.