75GXP ..... death rate?

[gc511]

Hello,

The much talked about IBM 75GXP failure rate has got me really worried, especially since I have owned the drive for 2 years now. So far, it shows no signs of dying.... no clicking, still quiet, HD tach scores are still basically the same as they day I bought it. However, I keep reading about it just dying out of nowhere or something. How many people have used the 75GXP for a bit of time, and still have it working? All i read about is it dying, but never really much about people having some success with it. If basically no one has much to say about it, I'll probably try and get a new hard drive soon.

Thanks

 

[Adul]

than i wouldnt worry, though 2 years is old. Might want to get a new drive has the waranty runs near its end.

 

[Yossarian]

100% failure rate. At least the ones I've owned (2).

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Like Adul says, if it hasn't died after 2 years you may get quite a bit more life out of it. The flaw is one of design though, and appears on the higher density GXP's sooner than the lower ones. It will be a spectre over your shoulder for as long as you use the drive. I would just plan on making a HDD upgrade part of the overhaul the next time you get/build a new computer. Go with something like WD or Maxtor. Never had either one of them fail on me yet...after 8+ years of using them.

 

[gc511]

Yeah, I ordered a maxtor (actually one of the ones from the hot deals sections. the 80 gig one), but it never came. I called staples up about it, and they said they ran out of them, and don't have them in stock at all until maybe later this week or something. Kind of messed up because the sales rep said they cancelled my order without ever telling me, but they didn't charge me atleast. I guess I'm going to wait until another good drive has a deal going on, and just buy it.

 

[Derango]

If its lasted this long, theres a decent chance that its going to be OK. Just make sure you make frequent backups since they can fail without any warning.

 

[JonnyDuke]

I would really advise you to get a new hard drive SOON! A friend of mine had two of the suspect drives for a year and a half with no problems... then one day just a few weeks ago, right in the middle of some work he was doing, CRASH!!! Grinding noises and all. One drive physically broke, the other back-up drive refused to boot.

It WILL fail, it's just a matter of WHEN...

 

[Slacker]

I am getting ready to rma my 45gb 75gxp after 13 months of use, I cant defrag the c: partition because of one file that cant be accessed, if I try to view or move/delete the file I get a disk I/O error, while trying to access the file I hear a "scratch, scratch, scratch" for about 30 seconds and then the error message pops up :frown:

 

[bizkit]

50% for me.

If it has lasted this long you got a good one.

 

[YBS1]

See sig for my opinion on the drives. To scare you even worse, my 75GXP that failed last week (also had a 60GXP go 2-3 days previous) had been in use and fine for well over a year (Manufactured date of Nov-2000), then failed on boot without warning. IBM drive fitness test and the bios fail to even acknowledge it exists, all I hear is click click click and obviously can't even attempt to run erase disk for repair. I've had 4, there is one left standing so my failure rate has been a craptastic 75%, I'm just waiting on the final one to go so I can finally be rid of these drives. So sad, as my 34GXPs are the best drives I've ever had. IBM needs to pull their heads out of their rear and get back to that quality level, and they say they are experiencing no higher than normal failure rates on the 75/60 series. Bullshit! All you need to do to see that is a lie is to do a search on this very forum.

 

[Jojo1971]

I got my 75 GB 75GXP 2 yrs ago and it finally died 2 weeks ago...It was running with an 80 mm fan but oh well...
The only good thing is that i have backed-up (the whole drive) my most most treasured programs/downloads 1 day before it died.... It started having a weird noise- clank, clank then my pc froze.. when I rebooted BIOS can't recognize it anymore...
I think I should avoid IBM drives in the future

 

[spanner]

Slackers. Sound like you have bad sectors, you need to scan the drive or do a low level format. My GXP is also still going after 2 years of heavy usage, looks like I got a good one out of the batch, I still listen out for clicks though.

 

[gc511]

Thanks for the replies. Maybe that's why mine lasted pretty long. hehe, i take pretty good care of the drive and all taht, but must be that I also got some luck with the one i got from IBM. Anyway, I am getting a new hard drive. Staples called again and got the maxtors back in stock.

Thanks again.

 

[HeinekinMan]

I bought two 46 GB 75GXPs (one made in Thailand, the other in Hungary) through onvia.com about 2.5 years ago. Absolutely no problems with either of them until about a month ago when one then the other crapped out suddenly (scratching, screeching sounds, random system lockups, drive failure at bootup, etc). Neither had any cooling on them. I was able to recover what data I needed and wipe them both clean. I replaced one of them with an 80 GB 120GXP and RMA'd the first. The replacement that IBM sent back was a refurbished 46 GB 75GXP, made in the Philippines. It's been running fine for the past month. I spent an entire day running the DFT tests on it; no problems found. I just RMA'd the other one.

On my 120GXP I'm using a Vantec HD cooler which seems be to working well (the drive stays cool to the touch). The two things that I've seen (newsgroups and forums) with the 75GXP series seem to be:

1. Controller failure due to heat.
2. Made in Hungary (although I had a Thailand made drive fail).

The ones made in the Philippines, on the other hand, *seem* to fair much better based on what I've read. Hopefully my replacement (made in P.I.) will function fine!!!

 

[Spaceloaf]

YIKES! I never knew the 75GXPs had such a high failure rate. I have a 20Gig Deskstar back from about 3 years ago when IBM HDs were considered the best in the bunch. I hope it doesn't crap out on me!

BTW, what do you guys consider the best drives to be now that IBM is so unreliable?

 

[Eug]

Strangely enough, every single one of my drives that are still alive are IBMs, including 2 75GXPs and 1 34GXP. I had one Maxtor recently that crapped out completely shortly after I installed it, and one Quantum that lost all it's data after several years of usage, but worked fine after a reformat.

Anyways, regardless of the brand you have, if you don't backup it's your fault if you lose the data. (I've got an extra external DVD-R/DVD-RAM, CD-RW, and external hard drive, as well as external zip.)

 

[ripthesystem]

<< BTW, what do you guys consider the best drives to be now that IBM is so unreliable? >>



Seagate, Maxtor, WD... in that order for me

I have 2 75GXP's.. 1 failed but I was able to tell Win2k not to recognize those sectors (about 1gig worth) and the other is A-OK.

knock on wood.
ripthesystem

 

[hmsrolst]

Since I had two 75gxp's that were going fine (I thought), I had been sceptical about their problems. In the search for quiet, I tried to copy one over to a Barracuda IV and it wouldn't do it. I did manage to create an image (overriding some error messages) and write the image to the Barracuda, so I didn't lose anything. When I tested the drive it failed and I RAM'd it. As of right now, I'm at 50%, but have now replaced the other 75gxp.