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HARD DRIVES. Recommendations. Please.

A

Alphathree33

Platinum Member
Hello folks,

I've been talking to some people on sharkyforums as well as here at anand in the hardware forum, and it sounds like my hard drive is going to go. It's an IBM 75 GXP, and I'm told they're prone to failure. (How come none of the reviews I read when I bought it a year ago mentioned that? They only talked about stellar performance, and nothing about half of them failing. Lol.)

Two things.

First, I want to be 100% sure I need a new hard drive. So, without bias based on the fact that I've told you I think I do need one, consider these symptoms:
- just ran IBM disk fitness test, it dectected bad sectors, "fixed" them supposedly. I then ran FDISK, recreated my partition and did a low level format. Reinstalled windows. Now any file I download and install about 20% into the installation it says either "file I/O error" or "corrupt cabinet file" or "corrupt file or bad installation media." I tried downloading the same files on my other computer and they installed perfectly.
- my hard drive sometimes makes clicking noises when accessing certain files which causes lockups
- I'm getting a ton of DLL/exe errors (those annoying "illegal operation" things that force you to close the program)
- STARCRAFT, a game which should run pretty damn well on my 1.1 GHz Tbird with a geforce2Ultra and half a gig of RAM... it crashes to desktop...
- And all of this was working fine a month ago.

So question (1) : DO I NEED A NEW HARD DRIVE or could something else be causing these problems?

Question (2) : IF YES, then what should I buy? I currently have a 45 GB so I want to land in that range, but 40 GB is fine. I want something that is *QUALITY* because I'll be damned if I go through this again a year from now. But I also want speed. Something that compares closely in performance to my 75 GXP which has otherwise been quiet and fast.

I'm most likely buying from Futureshop because here in Canada that's the best place. They seem to be keen on the Maxtor 40 GB 7200 RPM. Any thoughts on this hard drive? Thanks.
 


<< Well if you are under warranty just call IBM up and get a new mofo.... >>



Yeah and wait 4 to 6 weeks to get another refurbished piece of crap. No thanks.

Personally, I'm never buying an IBM product again. They might have a great R&D group. They might have a household name. But this isn't the first product of theirs that I have dealt with that is junk.
 
hmm, all my IBM stuff works great. My thinkpad, this old 300GL PC I got for free, my 34GXP drives, never had a problem with any of it.
 
If you go to [l=http://www.storagereview.com][/l] you will see the top drives in every category. I would highly recommend a Western Digital 1000BB (2MB cache) or 1000BB-SE (8MB cache). I have had EXCELLENT success with Western Digital in the past, and I'm still running three 7 year old Western Digital Caviar 250MB drives. Their new drive is extremely fast, and one of my clients is using it in his video editing system, streaming MPEG-2 encoded video without a single hiccup. Besides processor and system memory, the hard drive is the biggest pinch-off point in system peformance. There are a couple of drives that beat it in seek time, but overall this is the drive to get.
 


<< hmm, all my IBM stuff works great. My thinkpad, this old 300GL PC I got for free, my 34GXP drives, never had a problem with any of it. >>



OK I dont want to make this into an anti-IBM thread, I just want responses to my original post 🙂
 


<< Yeah and wait 4 to 6 weeks to get another refurbished piece of crap. No thanks. >>



Personally I have never had any problems with IBM drives. But hey its your money do what you want....hear the 120 gig WD is top notch.
 
Now now, calm down! The 45GB versions of the 75GXP were very prone to having problems. But, this doesn't mean that IBM, as a whole, makes bad products. I've had a 30GB and 75GB versions of this same hard drive running 24/7 since the 75GXP's were released. No problems.

You can't go wrong with Maxtor. But, if they're available, I would check out the new Western Digital WD1000. From the reviews I've read, this drive is incredible.
 
No matter what you buy now (Maxtor would probably be most bang for the buck), it's a good idea to have two physical HDDs anyway. That way you can keep a backup of your precious stuff separate from a failing drive.

So, get IBM to RMA that thing and buy a WD or Maxtor using as many coupons, free shipping and rebates as you can. You can also use the outer edge of that second drive for your swap file and temporary internet files. Keep them on separate controllers for a small performance boost.
 
Just picked up a 80GB Maxtor D740X...nice drive. Allows me to put my *cough* 45GB IBM75GXP *cough* to be my smaller secondary drive. Its made 3 'off' noises in its lifeime (10months) but to be fair, its been on 24/7 the whole time, and its performance has never missed a beat...but still, im wary of it since it is the most unreliable of the drivezs, and it has made a couple noises i dont deem normal. over the whole though, i dont really regret the purchase, and i did know about the problems just before i boguht it. I do however, wish id waited off 6 weeks or so and got the 60GXP 🙂
 
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