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

[Anonymous]

Yes, I'll be leaving now. I came over because the article and the dullards praising it were being ridiculed over at StorageReview, and I had to see the wreckage. Spectacular, really.

One last time folks, cold surfaces meeting with warm air make water. Whether you use cooling spray, a freezer, or leave it outside during winter makes no difference.

Und Leute machen Fehler, wie das Schreiben auf Deutsch anstelle von Englisch, Lebe wohl :wave:

[sKuLLsHoT]

My 75GXP drives are running fine. I've had one of them for about two years.

Right now, the two 40G drives are installed in a RAID 0 array on an Asus A7V133 mboard (Promise RAID chip).

Of course, to be completely honest, I have them installed in a CoolerMaster aluminum case (Model 201 or 205, I think ... it has 7 internal 3.5 drive bays) where two vertical 80mm fans blow cool air over them and two more 80mm fans serve as exhaust units. These fans come with the case as standard equipment.

I prefer the vertical fan alignment of the CoolerMaster cases over the horizontal fan alignment of the Lian Li cases. It just seems to me that I get better cool air distribution over my disc drives with vertical fans ingesting air from the front of the case.

BTW, the 75GXP drives can be adjusted to run quieter and cooler (and also slower). You can get the program from the IBM support site.

Hope this helps ...

Chynn Do'Urden
Dark Elf Wizard
Bristlebane Server
Everquest

Chynn
Nanomage Nano-Technician
RK-1 and Test servers
Anarchy Online

dude that is some helpful info posted for once!

that is the sccenario i had ( 'cept my fans were horizontal ) and if u read my post earlier - mine ran fine for just over a year until i moved it out from behind my 2x80mm fans...

i think with all this mention of the IBM tools - maybe we should call for oems/pc makers to upgrade the firmware and modify the drives running options before selling a system.

the ibm tool:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

[Wiggo]

Mmm..... A mistake by writin' in German then in English hey. :laugh:

[Anonymous]

My 40Gb 75GXP died on me after 8 months. On it were all my email address that I had collected whilst living in Sydney for 16 months, and all my photos that I took whilst travelling on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia :(

Bast#@d IBM drives!!

I RMA'ed it back to the Netherlands (at my expense, obviously), and they sent me back a 120GXP 40Gb, today hot off the press (manufactured FEB 2002).

My worry is, have they ironed out the problems with their high faliure rate? Or should I keeped it in the vacume sealed pack and sell it as second hand?

I bought a WDigital when the IBM went kaput, and I am thinking of investing in another (I need two drives for RAID 0).

Any advice re the 120GXP anyone???

Demetri... Birmingham, UK.

[Darthtanion]

Sorry about the loss of your data. It seems to be rather common now days. :(

As for the dependability of the 120GXP series drives, it's a bit too early to tell for sure if they are going to be any better or not. We'll just have to keep our eyes open for news concerning the reliability of it.

As for your plans to RAID, you will get the best results if you have two identical drives. Just because two drives are the same capacity and spindle speed doesn't mean that they will play nicely together.

Good luck!

[Synetech]

Hey,

Two days ago, an unregistered guest mentioned updating their firmware. Where can we get firmware updates? I've checked around the IBM sites with no luck.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Although this is unscientific, I believe the problems with the 60 and 75GXP drives has a lot to do with the POWER SUPPLY in the PC. These drives don't seem to like voltage spikes or dips at all. From what I've been seeing the drives inside PC's with cheap-o generic PSU's die quickly, and drives in PC's with good 300W+ brand name PSU's don't.

Now, it could just be once again a heat issue (cheap = lots of heat generated, expensive PSU = less heat? dunno) but in any case I do seem to see a pattern in cheap PSU .vs. expensive PSU in regards to drive failures...

Ted

[Wiggo]

The only thing is a lot of the ppl who are reporting these failures are using top quality PSU's so I don't really see that one holding much water sorry. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[BUhockey13]

I'm in the process of replacing my 30G 75GXP.... and I have a Enermax EG465P-VE FMA PSU... that's 431W of power..... here's my system:
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/wadzinski/HAL9000.htm

[Anonymous]

Sorry for being an unregistered poster but that's life.

I'm a computer engineer with too many years of experience behind me so I know a lot but by no means everything. Everybody lives and learns, if they don't then they shouldn't make comments in forums such as this - there's always somebody who actually knows more than you do!

My problem is that the sentiment of the original article is perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately the pseudo-factual content of the same article is too flawed to make it useful.

The first difficulty is establishing the cause of the problem. The reply about chipset faults may have some bearing especially if the failure is accelerated by thermal loading or cycling. There is also the IBM firmware update which appears to to have the result of reducing the localised build-up of heat on the platter. This would tie in with the premise of 'overheating' causing the symptom of the problem without specifying the actual cause of the failure.
(In this context, freezer spray is irrelevant so I'll not get drawn into the arguments about it but I'd just advise anyone intending to use it to learn how to - or why - first!)

Cooling therefore may - or may not - help 75gxp longevity. This is pure supposition but, like most PC components, cooling can't do anything but help since most cases toast their component parts day in, day out!

The second difficulty is IBM and its refusal to accept that there is a problem. They could acknowledge a high failure rate or, conversely, show failure rates for 75gxp drives which demonstrate that we are just a vocal minority (which to be quite honest is perfectly possible) but in either case they should just replace units under warranty with no hassle and no complaint. Unfortunately, when drives take weeks to turn around it does nothing for the company's credibility. Even worse if the 'new' drives go faulty soon after return.

So to summarise the whole of the article: "Is there a problem with 75gxp drives and if so is it thermally stimulated?" I can't answer without evidence I'm afraid ...

Whatever the reasons behind current events, look at the whole thing in context. WD, Segate and Maxtor have all had major problems in the past. All of these manufacturers are still supplying thousands of drives to satisfied customers. There is no reason why IBM should be any different. Perhaps the crux of the problem was that IBM kit was on such a pedestal for so long that no-one expected it to produce anything vaguely faulty so when it does happen they've got no idea how to deal with it themselves! The 'problem' here is perhaps not that the drives are (or are not) failing in abnormal quantities but that IBM are not putting their customers first when they have problems.

Finally, a tip to budding writers. Articles based on 'belief' or 'what I think' shouldn't try to include uninformed factual content. Don't attempt to mix 'guessed' facts and fiction which only serves to muddy the waters for everybody else.

[DigitalDD]

DigitalDD,
You mention you use ribbon over round cables...... I use rounded cables in my case.....

you think this might attribute to the bad blocks appearing on my IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30.0G drive?

Thanks

First sorry for not replying sooner but I've been real busy. now on to the question.

While I've seen varying reports that rounded cables can cause data corruption, I assume most of these 'reports' are from man-rounded cables not the nice machine rounded kind. I myself prefer to fold the flat IDE cables live origami flat against the side/bottom of the case. I can't honestly say that rounded cables cause any kind of data corruption because I've never experienced any, I just prefer to fold my cables and I figured I'd state that fact in my message.

Lord knows it might help isolate what causes these drives to fail if IBM knew what were the common factors in every environment where these drives failed.:sun:

[parthena]

The very least you should do is show us a pic of the inside of your case :cry:.

My HDD Cooler (Akasa very slim 2-fan) has arrived this morning, so there's no excuse for me to postpone the re-commissioning of my problematic ECS K7S5A with my new 120GXP, I've read more info than I can absorb or understand... but I really must have a nap now :zzz:.

PS : I didn't take it that you wouldn't use rounded cables, I thought you simply said you didn't.

[Anonymous]

From Austin, TX:

In Jan, 2001, I bought two 30GB IBM GXP75s (DTLA 307030) to run in my Abit KT7A-RAID. Ran a RAID-0 configuration (striped). Broken stripe after three months. Attempted rebuild, but a bad HDD. Sent it back, with IBM's ridiculous return shipping instructions. (Who saves HDD boxes? Well, I do. Now.)

Can't remember site of manufacture of original drive. Replacement is from Philippines. I ran a mirrored configuration (the numbers aren't as great, but it's reliable and I don't notice the difference much). Now the second one crashed, and I'm calling up IBM for it. It was Hungarian, FWIW.

In between the crashes, I switched to round cables (machine-made), and I have a Lian-Li case, with the two intake fans blowing over the IBM drives. I don't overclock; the only modification I've made is to reduce I/O voltage by .5V for reliability (MBM reported a high voltage on the 5V circuit). In my case (pun intended) heat is not killing these drives.

It's not a large sample, but I'm running a 66.6% failure rate on these drives. If IBM thinks I don't know how to use a HDD, they can kiss my pasty white sysadmin arse!

Frankly, I'm not buying another IBM drive for at least a year or so. I suspect marketing wanted the performance, but QA couldn't deliver. I'm having great luck with a pair of Maxtors (unintentional, it just kinda happened that way) in my other PC, and Seagate's out of the picture because at work, all the replaced HDDs are Seagate.

Email at [email protected] for more info.

[Anonymous]

I ran the latest IBM DFT on the system and everything checks out.

Ran the system for about 15 minutes, no testing, just seeing if it runs.

Waited about an hour, with the case open and booted it up. Lockup at the logon screen (Win98 with logon), drive starts making scratch-scratch-scratch, tic-tic sounds. Reboot, broken mirror. Other drive doesn't even show up.

From the sordid BIOS and SoundBlaster wars of the KT7A motherboard to today, this has been the most troublesome system I have ever dealt with. And I built it. Great confidence boost.

IBM is getting their disks back in pieces, if that's what it takes.

"Screw you guys, I'm going home"
-Eric Cartman

[BUhockey13]

Old pic of the inside of my case:


FYI: My ISP is changing the webserver in about 2 weeks..... so be fore warned...... :)

Since this picture I've removed on the of CD-ROM drives (on the blue cable) and replaced the IBM 75GXP 30G drive with 2 Maxtor D740X 40G ATA133 HDD in fan cooled trays... :D ..... plus I've made good use of plastic ties to tie up excess power cables and attempt to clear out a air path around the end of the GeForce2 Ultra card in the AGP slot so the air can flow from my 80mm delta fan in the front past the 60mm delta cooled Gladiator on the CPU to the 80mm delta in the back of the case.....