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

[Anonymous]

Seems to me there have been rumors of these problems for years, and if you were really concerned you wouldn't have bought from IBM in the first place. Seems to me like you needed some attention so you purposefully bought a drive you hoped would fail so you could complain about it and tell your cry baby story to all those who would listen. Tell your sob stories to someone who gives a damn and if you don't want to trash your harddrives then stop making them the storage for 100 user warez ftps, whose access thrashing kills the drive in such a short time, biotch.

[Anonymous]

I'm running 9 GXP drives some 40 gigs, 60 gigs, and 75 gigs. Most of them are running 24/7 and have had no problems.

I built two systems for my radio stations, an AM and an FM for music on hard drive. They are Win 2000 systems with the in studio software used to play the music and commercials on air, and over 5000 audio files compressed with MPEG 2 compression. Each of these systems have one 40 gig and one 60 gig drive and have been running for 24/7 for over a year without a problem.

One of the 75 gigs is in my personal computer at home, my fragger! One is installed in the system I built for the digital production computer we us to produce commercials. Both of these are over a year old as well and no problems. (I'm knocking on wood)

All these drives are well cooled mounted with one space between them in quality cases with front of case fans blowing directly on them. I am using good quality stable power supplies. I don't use the same power cables from the power supply for the hard drives that attach to the case fans. Each drive is set up as master and attached to it's own ATA 100 IDE port.

I can't tell you for a fact that the above is why they haven't failed, mabe it's just the luck of the draw, but I've removed some possibiltys for failure.

If you stick any 7200 rpm hard drive in a desktop case with the only cooling being the exsaust fan from your $29.99 power supply and slave it of the drive you just mounted it on top of there is a high probability of a short life span. Of course no one here would ever do that.

Djava

[Anonymous]

I do not run no sever on my HD. All i use my HD for is gaming, downloading game demos, and storing douments. Thats all too. So i do not stress out my HDs. *I never owned a IBM HD btw.*
Never will and never want to. WD1200JB is faster anyway.

[Anonymous]

Plus WD, Maxtor, etc HD brands do not have that dum 333 hours per a month recommened like IBM 120 gxp HDs have now. I have a feeling that IBM is trying you to get to buy SCSI if you want to leave your HD on for very long hours.

[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.

Before you open your mouth, or in this case start typing, please ensure you get your facts correct. At the start of the article in the introduction I say the following;



And yes, I'm 18 years old. Anand from AnandTech is 19/20 - Maybe it's time for you to start bagging Anand also because of his age.

:thumbs do

[Anonymous]

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

I haven't been able to test any as yet so I don't know.

[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 :)

That would make sense, that is about as long as mine lasted without cooling.

My inbox has been totally swamped with emails, but here is POSSIBLY another reason for the problem...

I thought I would add a comment for you. I work in
the IS group for a hard drive manufacturer (Not IBM,
but I should not say who). While I am not directly
involved with hard drive building and repairing, I
have heard some information about some chip issues we
have been experiencing on some drives. Apparently
there is a Cirrus Logic chip on many boards of various
manufacturers. There was a flaw in a bunch of the
Cirrus Logic chips that has since been fixed but was
plaguing them for awhile. The flaw would cause a hard
drive to stop working properly after about 5,000 hours
of run time. I don't have the whole scientific
expanation for it, but some sort of coating on the
Cirrus Logic chip breaks down and basically the chip
shorts itself out. It has been fixed, but I am sure
there are number of them out there. I don't know if
IBM used the Cirrus Logic chips, but a lot of
companies do. I don't know if this would be the
problem in the IBM's or not.

[Anonymous]

ROTFLMAO!!! You have a far long way to go B4 you post anything like this crappy comic on the web, simple a wasting of everyone's precious time.

[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.

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.

Fair enough. I can understand why you may think this. But from the way I wrote the article, doesn't it honestly sound like I had a serious attitude problem towards IBM? I wrote purely to increase the awareness of these drives and offer possible solutions to help other people from becoming victims.

Sure we may take these products for granted, but when so many people have been expericing problems, something needs to be done by IBM to cure these problems.

: peace:

[Anonymous]

ROTFLMAO!!! You have a far long way to go B4 you post anything like this crappy comic on the web, simple a wasting of everyone's precious time.

Bye! :wave:

[Bort]

Hello all, I'm back, visiting from OCAU. I just read your article on these drives and it was quite informative. I am running a 45G 75GXP that was installed around 11 months ago. I also put an Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler on it: I believe Vantec sell these but I bought one with a generic pack and it was only $25 or so. No problems with my drive so far, fingers crossed :D

I just love all these smileys
:cheers:

[Anonymous]

Seems to me there have been rumors of these problems for years, and if you were really concerned you wouldn't have bought from IBM in the first place. Seems to me like you needed some attention so you purposefully bought a drive you hoped would fail so you could complain about it and tell your cry baby story to all those who would listen. Tell your sob stories to someone who gives a damn and if you don't want to trash your harddrives then stop making them the storage for 100 user warez ftps, whose access thrashing kills the drive in such a short time, biotch.

MATE - If I wanted the attention and was an dishonest person - I would have just faked the hard disk drive had a problem, hell I wouldn't even had to even used one. Wake up to yourself...

This however was not the case. You post started off in a way which I was almost certain it would hold some creditbility, honestly I don't even know why I'm wasting my time responding. A "sob story" it may seem, to me I feel I did the community a favour by letting them know. In no way whatsoever was this a personal attack against IBM.

:zzz:

[Anonymous]

Hello all, I'm back, visiting from OCAU. I just read your article on these drives and it was quite informative. I am running a 45G 75GXP that was installed around 11 months ago. I also put an Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler on it: I believe Vantec sell these but I bought one with a generic pack and it was only or so. No problems with my drive so far, fingers crossed :D

I just love all these smileys
:cheers:

HI Bort, welcome to the crazy house, or so it seems... :)

[Anonymous]

Plus WD, Maxtor, etc HD brands do not have that dum 333 hours per a month recommened like IBM 120 gxp HDs have now. I have a feeling that IBM is trying you to get to buy SCSI if you want to leave your HD on for very long hours.

Sorry, that makes no sense. In the mean time what happens to the desktop sector? They loose their name totally and IBM don't even worry about protecting their market leading name? :rolleyes:

[Anonymous]

My 75GXP lasted almost a year, but last week died. Clicks of death are the only thing left, it can do. I guess I'll RMA it back to IBM. Thanks for the info.

Glad I could be of assistance.