IBM GXP Problems: The Truth Exposed and Possible Fixes (arti

[Anonymous]

Your article was nothing but supposition; your claims are not backed by facts. You come off sounding like a teenager. Are you?

Not that there's anything wrong with that...however, I can't take your website seriously if this is the kind of stuff you're going to publish.

[Anonymous]

just read the article referring to excessive heat as a possible cause of ibm's drive failures. It recommended extra cooling as a solution. my experience is that more cooling made no difference. I had my drives mounted directly in front of an inblowing 60cm fan & they still failed.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know if the new 120GXP's are experiencing any problems?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I was wondering whether anyone had hear of any problems with the new 120GXP models?

Thanks,
Robert

[Anonymous]

First: the DTLA (40GV/75GXP) firmware is buggy and causes the abnormally high failure
rates. A new firmware A5AA/A6AA is available at http://www.geocities.com/dtla_update

Second: There was a story of a clicking 120 GXP in comp.sys.ibm.pchardware.storage, so
the problem with the IBM drives seem not to be solved.

http://groups.google.de/groups?q=clicking+120gxp

[Anonymous]

[RDR]

Heat can be a concern with all 7200rpm drives

I've rma'd 5 Maxtor ATA100 7200rpm drives in the last 4 months - all less than a year old - & there is another one that is about to go
RAID & applications with a lot of swapping speed up the failure (obviously)

Last month I moved the HD on every PC here, that has a 72K rpm drive, to a 5.25" bay and put in bay cooler.

Warrenty or not failed a hard drives is not worth the head ache

[Anonymous]

//Warning! Some one's got a soap box, and he is going to use it...//

All the time I keep hearing about these drives failing. For some several within a few months will die.

My own experiance is quite different. Where I work we've been selling the 75GXP since the day it was released. Switched to the 60GXP as soon as our supplier had them in stock. And now all IDE drives we sell are either the 120GXP or the Samsung Spinpoint if it's to be a quiet machine, or there is extremely (as in none at all) cooling.

From the introduction of the 75GXP we must have sold more than 400 IBM IDE drives. So far we've had one (1) drive that's dead, and one that has shown symtoms of being afflicted...

One thing that is interesting is that we newer sell just the bare drives. All drives sold has been installed in a machine, most often a server. We have a small team of techs of whom none has been in the bussiness for less than 10 years. And all chassis we use are high quality chassis from well known manufacturers such as Chenming and Paloalto Design Group, or special designs that's built to order by Taiwanese manufacturers.

Our customers are not the kind that would fail to mention a hard drive failure. So I'm pretty sure those two are the only failures so far.

Now, how much of this is pure luck? Statistically we should have a large number of these drives fail. It could still happen, and if so, we will have a problem on our hands.

But could there be some other factor at play. Cooling was one that struck me as likely. But it could also have some thing to do with the way the drives are handled, both by the enduser, but perhaps also during transportation and handling in the warehouse and at the factory.

If one of the major factors turn out to be the handling at the plant, and during transport and disribution, then we are back at the "Pure Luck" (tm) stage. [8P

Are there anyone else that has had good experiences of these drives? If I'm the only one, then the "PureLuck"(tm) theory gains ground, and I should put some of the other techs in charge of minding the phone. I can't take verbal abuse... ;)

[Anonymous]

I bought two 40Gb 60GXP's for use in a RAID. The RAID failed after about a month. BUT... I am almost positive that it wasn't because of the hard drives. There was an issue with the Highpoint RAID controller on my Abit motherboard. I flashed a new BIOS and tried it again and this time there were no RAID failures.

Since then, I have decided to forgo the RAID option; partly because I needed more space and partly because I failed to see a real speed increase. I have one of the drives in my home PC, which operates 24/7, and it is even enclosed in a Molex Silent Drive!! How about that? Not only is the drive always on, it is completely encased in a soundproof enclosure! So far, it has been running solid for about two months. I haven't had any failures yet, but these articles and posts make me nervous!

[Anonymous]

I think my 75GXP has just fallen to this: it starts makeing a loud "CHH CHH CHH" when I read from certain parts of the disk. Worked great for about a year and a half until just this past weekend.

It was an OEM drive, but I heard that all IBM drive have a 3 year warranty. Anyone know for sure, and who would I contact to go about getting an RMA?

[Anonymous]

Sorry folks but the soapbox tends to spew a lot of negativity when one person has a gripe on a well built product.

This sounds to me more like a case of a disgruntled customer who did not get what he wanted and is trying to tarnish an otherwise impeccable name. I've been in the computer industry for over 15 years and it seems the industry is filled with people who, no matter how hard you try, you can never satisfy. This to me seems like a clear cut case of one person getting calling out IBM to cater to his needs. I'm willing to bet the farm if anyone were to check with IBM and their records, they would see countless calls by this individual who made outrageous demands well outside the realm of customer satsifaction.

Let's take a look at Anandtech's report on the IBM Deskstar 75GXP Ultra ATA 100 Hard Drive.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1287&p=15

And their quote on their own temperature testings:

The IBM 75 GXP is one of the coolest drives we have tested under our new temperature testing methodology. While this is only the third drive we have tested that has included temperature data, we think the low figures here represent the kind of quality that IBM engineered into this drive.


I think it's only fair to give the drive an honest estimation rather than a biased opinion.

This post was not intended as a flame but a representation of what goes on in the world behind the products we take for granted.

[Wiggo]

The strange thing is that a lot of major tech sites around the world are reporting a lot of failures with these drives and if they were so good why then is there a large class action being taken against IBM over these drives if there are no problems ?
Sorry but from what I've read and heard from others certainly has me worried about the reliability of these drives especially when it's coming from people who know how to handle these drives.
Several local vendors around me have stopped carrying these drives as they say they are more trouble than they're worth. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Anonymous]

I was going to buy a 15 or 30 gig IBM 75 gxp series but once i read all the failures on them and took the time to do a lot of research i brought a Maxtor HD instead and i am thinking i did a good thing. I wanted the IBM because they are fast but i rather have a stable HD. #1 is stability but i do know you should always backup because HDs do not last forever. So far my Maxtor has been running for 6 to 11 months +

But does not really matter anymore about IBM because i am not ever going to buy one even if i never owned one. Plus WD 1200JB with 8 mb of cache is the fastest IDE HD. It is faster than the IBM 120 gxp series. Plus the WD 1200JB with 8 mb of cache only runs at 22C in use. Has three platters too. While the IBM 120 gxp 80 gig runs at 48C in use and is only 2 platters. Sorry but thats way too hot in my book. I would use cooling for it but i have a feeling not even that would help that 48C running HD much.

[Anonymous]

Also the dum IBM 120 gxp series HDs by IBM are only recommended to run for 333 hours a month. If you do not believe me just go look at the .pdf file at IBM :)