IBM hard drives..

[Chau]

ive heard that theres a certain series of IBM hard drives that have died on people all the time...was it the 65gxp series or something?? right now i have a 60 gig ibm, not sure which series... i was wondering, for those of u that had hard drives die on you, did your hard drive start making weird noises at first? like it'd make the sound like it's accessing the hard disk, hard to explain, but it's like 3 little clicks sort of i guess, and 2 series of those clicks...it'd make the 3 clicks once, breif pause, and then again...it does this randomly, and these sounds are really distinct from the regular sound that the hard drive makes when it's reading information off the disk

thanks

 

[pulse8]

It sounds like the "click of death" which could also mean the drive is trying to access a bad sector.

 

[CKDragon]

You either have:

75GXP (15 Gigs per platter x 4 = 60 Gigs)
60GXP (20 Gigs per platter x 3 = 60 Gigs)

The newer 120 GXP hold 40 Gigs per platter, but that's definitely not yours because the math doesn't work.

The few platters, the less hot the drive gets, the safer you are. I personally wouldn't buy an IBM drive with more than 2 platters in it because once you hit 3+ it starts to cause too much heat. I've had 2 30 Gig 75GXPs running for a year and a half perfectly but a 45 Gig 75GXP in a friend's rig has failed three times already.

There are a few other theories as to why they fail, but that's what I believe from what I've heard. Either way, it sounds like your drive is headed down Deathstar lane, I'd copy any significant files FAST.

CK

 

[Alphathree33]

My 75GXP died on me about six months ago. Replaced it with a WD and never had a problem again.

It is clicking noises which go click click click pause click click clik and when this happens you can't do anything on your computer. It may recover from it, it may crash and you'll need to reboot.

You can run scan disk on thorough and reformat as many times as you want. It won't work.

 

[Legendary]

Glad I just bought a WD 1200JB. I read IBM was dropping out of the HD business? I didn't bother to follow up to confirm, did anyone else hear about it?

 

[Chau]

Originally posted by: Alphathree33
My 75GXP died on me about six months ago. Replaced it with a WD and never had a problem again.

It is clicking noises which go click click click pause click click clik and when this happens you can't do anything on your computer. It may recover from it, it may crash and you'll need to reboot.

You can run scan disk on thorough and reformat as many times as you want. It won't work.

ahh, yeah that's exactly what's happening right now.. how long do you think i'll have before the hard drive actually dies on me? im hoping to be able to hold off until thursday to get a new hard drive so i can copy all my stuff over... what would be the best way to keep my hard drive to last as long as possible right now...leaving it on, or shutting my computer off?

thanks

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: Legendary
Glad I just bought a WD 1200JB. I read IBM was dropping out of the HD business? I didn't bother to follow up to confirm, did anyone else hear about it?

They sold their hard drive business to Hitachi.

 

[SSP]

This is why I bought a Maxtor instead. There were too many cases of IBM and WD drives failing. Although WD has improved a lot since then, the Maxtor was cheap and fast.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: Chau
ahh, yeah that's exactly what's happening right now.. how long do you think i'll have before the hard drive actually dies on me? im hoping to be able to hold off until thursday to get a new hard drive so i can copy all my stuff over... what would be the best way to keep my hard drive to last as long as possible right now...leaving it on, or shutting my computer off?

thanks

Well, you're at least getting a warning that things may be about to go. My replacement 75GXP refurb didn't give me that option, death was very immediate. If it were me, I'd backup anything critical TONIGHT, and go buy a replacement tomorrow.

 

[silverpig]

I've got an 800JB. Benches almost as fast as a 6 month older IDE RAID or SCSI setup...

 

[Nefrodite]

i dunno, i have a 60gb western digital that is being rma'd for the 2nd time i think ibm and western digital shared tech.

that being said, i have a working 100gb western digital

 

[Alphathree33]

Originally posted by: Chau

Originally posted by: Alphathree33
My 75GXP died on me about six months ago. Replaced it with a WD and never had a problem again.

It is clicking noises which go click click click pause click click clik and when this happens you can't do anything on your computer. It may recover from it, it may crash and you'll need to reboot.

You can run scan disk on thorough and reformat as many times as you want. It won't work.

ahh, yeah that's exactly what's happening right now.. how long do you think i'll have before the hard drive actually dies on me? im hoping to be able to hold off until thursday to get a new hard drive so i can copy all my stuff over... what would be the best way to keep my hard drive to last as long as possible right now...leaving it on, or shutting my computer off?

thanks

Mine lasted for a long time afted it started doing that. But it got progressively worse.

 

[Doggiedog]

Yeah, you are getting the click of death. The time it takes for your drive may vary though. I had a 45GB 75GXP and it took about a year to die. But when it went it you could definitely tell something was wrong. It was transferring about 1GB per hour when I started moving my files to another HDD. I ran a disk fitness test on it and it said the HDD was a goner. RMAed it to IBM and got a brand new 60GB 60GXP but I think that drive may be going to, unless it is my 30GB GXP (can't tell).

 

[AU Tiger]

Sounds like your drive is heading south. Get all the data off of it while you can, then run the IBM drive fitness test to see if you qualify for a RMA.

The 75GXP was the series with the bad rep. In its prime the 75GXP was the preferred drive of most Anandtech users. It is still a very solid drive if it is working and there are plenty out there that may never fail.

 

[galt]

I wish I had gotten warning signs. My hard drive just up and died. One boot, perfect. Next day ... no boot at all. The only thing I'm thankful about is that for no good reason (atleast at that time there didnt' seem to be any) I decided to backup everything I had on my 60gxp to a spare hdd the day before it died. I really don't know what posessed me to do that. But the next day when my computer wouldnt boot, I was sure as hell glad that I had done that. Hope the replacement drive (RMAed) won't do the same.

 

[Pardus]

as a person who has 6 ibm drives and only 2 of them died in the past 2 years, a ibm tech told me when you first get that new ibm drive home, do a low level zero write to it using there hd tools, it basically checks every sector for errors and fixes the ones it can. i did this to a drive that was making a lot of clicking sounds and has been quiet ever since.

i keep my drives cool with those internal hd cooler devices that go under your hd to lessen the amount of heat. if the drive does die and you can get it to boot or anything, someone told me to stick the hd in the freezer for 4 hours, it should boot and you can use it for 1/2 hour or so.

my luck with ibm drives is just that, luck. my next hard drive will be those western digital special edition series.

 

[Alphathree33]

Originally posted by: ActiveX
as a person who has 6 ibm drives and only 2 of them died in the past 2 years, a ibm tech told me when you first get that new ibm drive home, do a low level zero write to it using there hd tools, it basically checks every sector for errors and fixes the ones it can. i did this to a drive that was making a lot of clicking sounds and has been quiet ever since.

i keep my drives cool with those internal hd cooler devices that go under your hd to lessen the amount of heat. if the drive does die and you can get it to boot or anything, someone told me to stick the hd in the freezer for 4 hours, it should boot and you can use it for 1/2 hour or so.

my luck with ibm drives is just that, luck. my next hard drive will be those western digital special edition series.

You consider a 33% failure rate to be lucky?

 

[jarsoffart]

I got a IBM 60GXP 60 gigabyte hard drive from NewEgg in early February and it died around June 14. My friend's drive, a Western Digital 120 gb Special Edition (WD1200JB), recently died and had the same exacty symptons as mine (motherboard not able to detect parameters), but his didn't sound like mine. NewEgg approved his RMA in literally around ten minutes after he sent it. I was able to recover my data with EasyRecovery DataRecovery (from Ontrack.com). I'm going to send in a RMA refund request soon. A little off topic but, will I get the amount of money I paid for my drive back, as in the $109 I paid originally, even though its been like six months?

 

[AT]

My 40gig 60GXP died last Friday. Hung the machine and on next reboot the drive just clicked. At the shop where I got it replaced they said that there has been no significant amount of failures on the 60GXP family as has been with the 75 series. Also they said that the replacement drives in the 75 series have been better quality.