IBM = POS drives - a myth or bitter truth?

[iamTux]

There are so many bad reports about IBM drives floating around. But those IBM Deskstar IC35L080AVVA07 80.0GB 7200/min are incredibly cheap atm, now that IBM quits making HDs. I can easily add a third drive to the raid stripeset for the price of two Maxtors in my new rig.

Does anyone have good or bad experiences with the particular model mentioned above? A 3 drive set would be awesome in terms of speed (and I could make great use of the additional storage). But three drives mean three times as much danger of catastrophic failure.

What are your experiences? Mystical story-tellers need not apply ..

 

[Lucky]

I would not use an IBM HD in a RAID setup unless it was mirrored.

There is certainly some amount of bitterness from those who lost drives but that doesnt change the fact that they were failing at an abnormally high rate. Some claim the later models fixed this; my experiences hold to the contrary. I lost a 40 gig GXP last week after only 6 months of usage.

Yes, they are incredibly cheap. Tempted me when I went to buy a new one. I went seagate instead.

No experience with that drive, sorry, but I would absolutely not recommend them (in general) in RAID unless it was mirrored.

 

[Zugzwang152]

I don't pretend to voich for any IBM reliability. All I can tell you is that my 40 GB GXP has been running for over a year, on at least 18 hours a day for at least 6 days a week. It has not failed on me yet. There was a slight problem early on, which was mostly my fault, but I did have to reformat reinstall. I never figured out whether it was me or the drive though.

 

[Shagga]

I guess I have seen enough horror stories about IBM GXP drives to last a life time. Although they used to be the prefered drive for speed they quickly fell behind with all these stories of failures. I recommended one to a friend who was building a PC for the first time. 6 Months later he was complaining that he was losing information all the time. Bad user, or hardware, you decide but I won't honestly recommend IBM again that is until the next IBM drive arrives that has the world giving it the thumbs up. People used to knock Quantum drives as being unreliable, but I never had a problem with them. I still have one now which is, must be 5 years old now and still going stong.

So, I guess it is highly likely that with all the bad reports which are founded on personal experiences there can only be one outcome. Personally, I would stay away from them for the time being. MAXTOR are all the rage at the moment, that is until they fail and all the bad press starts... However, mine are singing sweetly as a songbird....

 

[m2kewl]

I wouldn't touch IBM Deathstar drives with a ten foot pole. I got a 40gb from the Hot Deals forum and it was ram'd in less then a year.

 

[SteelCityFan]

I have a 34GXP that has been used VERY heavily since March 2000, and I have not had any problems with it. I am about to Install Linux on it.

I have not used any of their newer drives as I went from that to the JB WD series.

 

[Booster]

Well, I put my money on that it's a bitter truth. And that's why. Had it all been just a myth, so many people wouldn't complain about these drives all across the 'net. For example, I've never heard anyone complain about Seagate HDs quality, ever. That's why I'm a happy Seagate user. Their drives aren't the fastest, unfortunately, but they're very reliable and quiet.

 

[murphy55d]

My 40gb IBM drive has not given me any problems.

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: murphy55d
My 40gb IBM drive has not given me any problems.

Good for you, then. I been using Seagate drives solely since 200MB drives days, and never had a single problem or glitch. I really don't want to have any different user experience and try my luck with another brand. However, when Hitachi straightens out IBM HD technology, I might get one of their drives just for the heck of it, if it will be as quiet as a Barracuda IV, of course.

 

[BeefcakeVA]

But are those posting here saying that they don't have any problems using the 75GXP or 60GXP series of drives? The 75GXPs were supposed to be the ones with an abnormally high failure rate. Personally, I've been running my 60GB 60GXP for 12 months of 24x7 usage with nary a problem.

Thus, I think if you completely stay away from any older 75GXPs there shouldn't be much of a problem. Perhaps there is information out there that I don't know about, however. If so, I'm sure someone will post it

 

[aka1nas]

60GXPs were just as bad. The problem seemed to be mainly due to the use of IBM's "pixie dust" technology as well as a few other defects. If I recall correctly, the 75GXPs made in Hungary had the highest failure due to that fab using decommisioned paltters that were not up to snuff to be used with the pixie dust technology.

 

[jema]

Got a 30GB 75GXP made in hungary, been running fine for 1,5years now.

All my HDDs to date have been IBM devices and they have all worked well so for now I'll keep using them.

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by: BeefcakeVA
But are those posting here saying that they don't have any problems using the 75GXP or 60GXP series of drives? The 75GXPs were supposed to be the ones with an abnormally high failure rate. Personally, I've been running my 60GB 60GXP for 12 months of 24x7 usage with nary a problem.

Thus, I think if you completely stay away from any older 75GXPs there shouldn't be much of a problem. Perhaps there is information out there that I don't know about, however. If so, I'm sure someone will post it

oops, looks like I left that out in my post above. the 40 gigger I lost a couple weeks ago was a 60gxp (made in malaysia?).

 

[SaturnX]

Originally posted by: jema
Got a 30GB 75GXP made in hungary, been running fine for 1,5years now.

All my HDDs to date have been IBM devices and they have all worked well so for now I'll keep using them.

I'm in the same position as jema my 30GB 75GXP from Hungary has been working great for over a year and a half right now.

--Mark

 

[Bartman39]

Uh been running 2-45gig 75GXP`s in raid for over a year...

BTW I trust my 75gig 75GXP with 65gigs+ of full MP3 albums...

But hey backup is way of life with any HD... (they are mechanical and will fail sooner or later...)

 

[Jmmsbnd007]

It's a risky purchase. When the first reported failures for anything other than the 75GXP's came in, I scoffed at them. Eve nwhen everyone was saying how bad they are, I just looked at my 60GXP with it's unknown TEC (means the drive is good, and won't fail for a long time according to SMART) and scoffed at them again, but then I finally realized that there was a problem. A lot of people have good IBM drives, but I'd still wait.

 

[cbuchach]

I had a set of two 75GXP's in a RAID array. In a few months time both ended up going bad. These were replaced with two 60GXP's and so far these have been running fine. I also have a 120GXP in my system which also seems to be running well, but this drive has a high idle noise which others have noted.

What I have found to be the problem with IBM drives and my system is using the fast boot option on my Asus board. When I have this option selected, sometimes the drives don't seem to spin up in time to be recognized by the BIOS. When this happens, the drives go on endlessly clicking and are never properely initialized. With the fast boot option unchecked, this behavior has NEVER happened. So in hindsight, I think this was the problem I was having with my 75GXP's.

 

[cbuchach]

Oh and I should add, IBM drives function very well in a RAID array. This is in contrast to Seagate drives which have been noted to have serious performance problems when placed in a RAID0 array. Supposedly you can contact Seagate and get special "RAID optimized" drives.

 

[iamTux]

Thanks for your input so far.

What about that RAID problem of Seagate drives. Can you provide a link to read it up?

 

[toadstool]

My vote leans toward IBM=POS.

My experience with IBM sucks. I bought a 75 gxp drive. It failed after about 9 months. I RMA'd it to IBM. They sent me back the SAME 75gxp drive. They just "refurbished" the one I sent in . (with all my information gone , of course)

I have no problem with companies just repairing hardware, rather than shipping new ones out. HOWEVER, I've had the drive back for 6-7 months now. I just installed a new motherboard yesterday. As soon as I boot up, I hear those "sounds of death" coming from my IBM drive again. I thought it was a goner (again!!), but somehow , after fiddling around with it came back to life again. For how long, I have no idea.

So now I'm in the process of copying my info from the IBM drive to another drive, because I have no idea now how long it'll last. Once it starts making those sounds, its days are numbered.


I would not buy an IBM drive after 1) it failed on me 2) The" refurbished "drive is now dying a slow death


I've been buying Maxtor's since.

 

[Sunner]

A store where I buy most of my stuff has a nifty feature on their site.

Assuming they sell enough of an item to gather useful statistics, their site will automatically publish the RMA frequency of the item in question.

In the case of the 120 GB 120GXP, the RMA frequency is 0.36% right now, not too shabby.
By comparison, the RMA freq of the 120 GB 1200JB from WD is 0.83%.

 

[krackato]

I've got a 75gxp 75gb drive in a firewire case that I've been using since they were released and it still hasn't died. That being said, I completely believe that they have a higher failure rate simply due to the polls that have been conducted and the huge amounts of complaints. There was even a company that was using them for mass web-based storage. They bought over a hundred or so, and finally replaced them all due to the high failure rate. I can't remember the company or where I read the article since I read it a long time ago, so you'll have to take my word for it. Needless to say, there's no point in buying an IBM drive when there are more reliable solutions out there. Even if it never dies, you'll worry in the back of your mind that it will die and it's worth getting a different drive just to put your mind at ease.

 

[JoPalm]

I guess i'm one of the lucky ones too, been using my 30GB 75GXP for a year and a half almost...on 24/7 too unless i'm on vacation.

 

[galt]

My opinion? Bitter Truth. Had 2 Deathstars die on me. I'm waiting on my third to kick the bucket. Every other hard drive I've had has had no problems. My 4gb Seagate thats four years old is still live and kicking.

 

[zxczxc]

i heard GXP's failure rate was like 40% within 3 years.