IBM Deathstar models?

Joony

Diamond Member
Jan 17, 2001
7,654
0
0
I remember reading about this a while back. I believe one of the hard drives in my powermac G4 maybe be affected :(

It started making noises a while back and the G4 could not see the drive, so I pulled it out. Today I finally took it out and sucessfully covered the data.

I googled for some information and I wasn't able to find much about it.

The one I have is "IBM-IC35L080AVVA07-0"

I read about some sort of firmware update that might fix this?
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,437
1,659
136
It looks like its a 120GXP, as far as I new only the 30GXP, 45GXP and 75GXP were affected, The 60GXP which came out after the 75 GXP might also be at fault. This happened because of the switch to glass platters and heat, the expanded more then they were used to and the heads wouldn't compinsate for it, this was more of an issue when the density increased so most of the problem drives were in the 75GXP.

Side comment I had 1 45 GXP and 2 75 GXP drives and never had a failure. I am still using a 120GXP (which was a 120GB model) in a computer with out issue.
 

alanore

Member
Jan 1, 2006
66
0
0
Probally just suffering from a natural death rather than being effected by the deathstar syndrom
 

007ELmO

Platinum Member
Dec 29, 2005
2,046
36
101
I thought you were talking about an IBM computer used in the death star for sale...
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
19
81
My IBM experiences:
Customer hard drive, 60GXP, click of death

60GB 120GXP - head crash. It started making hideous noises, as the head scraped across the platters.

Larger 180GXP, which was the replacement from Hitachi. It died 44 days after I received it, of what sounds very much like the infamous click of death. Soundfile, 182KB.

Sister's laptop hard drive, IBM. 30GB. IC25N030ATC04-0. No longer detected by system - sounds like a variant of the click of death.

And I've got a 20GB IBM Travelstar that's developing bad sectors. Model IC25N020ATDA04-0.
I never want to deal with another IBM/Hitachi drive ever again.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,437
1,659
136
Originally posted by: Jeff7
My IBM experiences:
Customer hard drive, 60GXP, click of death

60GB 120GXP - head crash. It started making hideous noises, as the head scraped across the platters.

Larger 180GXP, which was the replacement from Hitachi. It died 44 days after I received it, of what sounds very much like the infamous click of death. Soundfile, 182KB.

Sister's laptop hard drive, IBM. 30GB. IC25N030ATC04-0. No longer detected by system - sounds like a variant of the click of death.

And I've got a 20GB IBM Travelstar that's developing bad sectors. Model IC25N020ATDA04-0.
I never want to deal with another IBM/Hitachi drive ever again.


Which is all understandable, All of my WD (cept Raptors) hard drives have failed and my seagates have all been horrible performers. My Maxtors and IBM/Hitachi drives have worked like champs. I know thats not the general consensus but thats the way they have worked for me. I was just noting that DeathStar doesn't mean immenent failure, and as someone noted That the age of both the 120 GXP and 75 GXP would make them well out of warranty and therefore failures even releated to the Glass Platters and the GMR (i think) heads would be deaths of old age and not DeathStar senarios.

While I am a big fan of drives lasting a long time I hear about people whinning about the failure of a part out of warranty. Warranties lengths are set to A.) make customers feel safe and happy and B.) To prevent repair/replacements from dragging down the company. This means that they make it only so long as to keep people happy but prior to the point in time where the failures would start to escalate. That means after the warranty ends it is projected to have an even higher chance of failure then the day before while it still had a warranty. Trust me if they could set days like 1024 days 6 hours and 9 minutes for the warranty they would. Also those warranties are usually designed around precieved general use for a HDD its 7 hours a day, so for people who run the computer 24/7 like myself the projected failure rate would be exceeded in one third the time.

I am note saying this inregards to any one responce I just want you guys to keep this in mind both when buying a product and also when making statements like I won;t buy blah blah blahs products.