4 out of 6 IBM drives where crap!

[prontospyder]

Had no problems with the 2 IBM drives that I own.

 

[Doomsday]

I've got an IBM hard drive, and I've had no problems with it. Did you order them at the same time, because it could have been the shipping, or it could have been a slightly bad day at the factory, or even the company you bought it from. I run my system overclocked, and I don't seen any problems at all with it, and I'm not that big of a hard drive maintanence guy.

 

[Warrenton]

I run my PCI at a whopping 35Mhz.

 

[randomlinh]

that whopping 35mhz ate my 5.7GB maxtor. But maxtor kicks butt in the RMA dept.

 

[MWink]

I have had some problems with IBM drives too. I have seen 2 with problems (though neither actually failed). I have tried to keep away from them since.

 

[thorin]

Modus
"I've got nothing against Quantum drives but Maxtor is pretty much the accepted price/performance leader at the moment."

Ok I can agree with that, you've quoted a source and I've looked. Anand did find the Maxtor to perform better in some cases, however he concludes "With average raw data transfer speeds comparable to the highly rated Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40, along with a solid showing in the other tests, we felt the Quantum Fireball Plus LM is about on the same level as the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40. Even though it edged the Maxtor out on a few tests, we still think the Maxtor managed to hold on to it's lead, but just barely."

I have to admit that I haven't done much looking around since the Fireball Plus KX days. At which point Quantum was taking 1st or 2nd in almost all tests. However a quick look at a few reviews including the "Summer 7200rpm ATA Roundup" at storage review concludes "In the end, the competition for "top drive" comes down to two units: IBM's Deskstar 75GXP and Quantum's Fireball LM".

Prices at Dirt Cheap Drives as of 8/10/00 ($/GB) (That's ~1 month ago)
Maxtor: $6.50
Quantum: $6.30

And points out that the current Plus AS series from Quantum offer 20GB per platter, and better then Plus LM performance.

Linkage:
? Storage Review's Leader Board
? Storage Review's Summer Roundup
? Quantum's Product page

So in ratio I agree Maxtor is the bang for buck leader, but it doesn't take the performance crown.

Thorin

 

[DarkRipper]

The only drive I have ever had go bad was a Maxtor 8gb drive. It wouldn't even recognize as it's real size. I finally formatted it at it's specified size, and it would corrupt any data loaded to it.
I didn't bother to call Maxtor, as it was a "try this, if you can get it to work you can have it" kind of deal. I was actually able to do more by formatting it at 8gb than the previous owner....

Anyway, my point is that I would not buy another Maxtor, from this experience.

I think I will continue to purchase IBM drives, which have yet to fail me, even though they tend to run 10-20% more than the equivalent Maxtor.

MHO
DR

 

[Adrian Tung]

My 20.5Gb 34GXP IBM drive did a whirr-click on my one night just after powering on my un-overclocked PC, but apart from that single, rare incident it has been running fine. Something for me to worry about?

atwl

 

[TomY]

Sounds like the sources for some of those messed up IBM drives have been playing "How fast can this HD roll down the stairs"". IBM drives are notorious for being the most reliable HDs available. As a habit, I run IBM's Drive Fitness test before I install anything on a new IBM drive and since I only use IBM drives I use it everytime I build a new system. Run the complete/comprehensive test and it will tell you if the drive is a keeper or return.

Btw, been away from the forum for a week or so. The new reply/posting interface is cool. cheers to whoever did this.

 

[mikeinfwa]

I can't freakin believe it!!!

The latest IBM 20 GB HD I received on an RMA directly from IBM just crapped out on me. That now makes my numbers 5 out of 7 IBM HD's were pieces of crap.

This latest one gave me bootup errors "disk error reading drive c"
I ran a full scandisk surface scan. Scandisk found bad sectors.
it is now in the process of moving the data from the bad sectors.
Hope it recovers my data!!!

I'm gonna call the IBM rep and ask for a damn refund...I am sick and tired of these IBM drives giving me these headaches!!


mike

 

[Doomguy]

mike: You are obviously to blame for the problems. You cant get that many bad hard drives. Something you are doing or something in your system is killing those hard drives. Dont blame the problems on IBM.

 

[*kjm]

I sold around 80 to 90 systems with IBM drives and have yet to have one come back. I am talking about 6 years of sales! I have always had IBM and WD dives in my systems and have never had a problem. But I will tell you I get "dead drives" from work all the time and bring them home format them and bingo I have a new drive that works in one of my systems for years.

 

[mikeinfwa]

I dont know how i could be the one to blame for these ibm failures.
I have purchased many various HD's over the past few years. It's only the IBM's that are giving me troubles.

The only common demoninator is that these is these drives have gone into an ABIT BH6 board.
Is it the board that is killing these Hard Drives???

mike

 

[superbaby]

WOW weird...

I have an Abit BH6, and my IBM 20GB drive crapped out on me too. Right now it's having a heck of a time trying to read data, I'm desparately trying to back things up but I'm getting blue screens so often this is near impossible. I've got all my critical files but a lot of configurations are going to be lost if I can't back up the entire drive!

I don't know what I should do, I really need this drive, I can't just take it out the system and say the hell with it. I'm thinking of getting a 40GB drive tomorrow.

How do you contact IBM for RMA? I bought my drive OEM and all I got was a static bag and the drive. Is there a number that I can call?