IBM = POS drives - a myth or bitter truth?

[aka1nas]

Well, I went through 4 60GXPs myself(though there was a possibility that I had a slightly defective PSU tossing out bad voltage on one of the lines) Still, my 30GB seagate was also in the system and it's still running fine. My brothers 75GXP RAID setup finally died on him last month after a year and a half. So I have had quite a few bad experiences with IBM, to the point that I wouldn't buy any of their drives even if they were still making them.

 

[Dreadogg]

OMG I thought this topic was dead and bang right back again!

 

[Darien]

I have a 30GB 75GXP, and a 40GB 60GXP.

The 75GXP I've had for about 2 years now, and it still runs fine.

The 60GXP I've had for about 11 months, and I keep the computer with this thing on virtually 24/7.

So far so good.

 

[glugglug]

IBM DTLA-307060 (60GB) here. FREQUENT bad blocks always preceded by the system pauses while it does the click of death noise.

So I would say bitter truth.

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
60GXPs were just as bad.

And how did you come to this sage conclusion? Have you actually seen any statistical evidence that they are "just as bad"? Can you provide reference to any studies saying so?

Claiming you can judge the quality of an entire line of hardware based on a trickle of complains on ATF is less sensible than claiming you can judge the aerodynamic of a car by licking your finger and sticking it out the window.

Anytime one of these threads shows up, all we get is a bunch of people saying "my drive died" "my drive is alive" ... and even if you add it all up, it's still meaningless.... why?
(a) with thousands or millions of drives sold, 10 responses is no where near enough to determine a trend.
(b) people who have problems with their IBMs are going to bitch a lot more than people without problems.

The bottom line is, you're not going to find "the truth" on Anandtech... too many people here love to latch onto speculation & rumour as if it's 'fact'...

If you want "the truth" why don't you think sensibly and at least ask people who deal with dozens of IBM drives a week AKA system builders. They'll have a MUCH better idea which hardware is 'reliable' than forum members who at best replace their hardware 2x a year.

 

[WarmAndSCSI]

I dunno... I've never had any IBM HDDs. I've just stuck with Maxtor and Western Digital

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: grant2
Originally posted by: aka1nas
60GXPs were just as bad.

And how did you come to this sage conclusion? Have you actually seen any statistical evidence that they are "just as bad"? Can you provide reference to any studies saying so?

Claiming you can judge the quality of an entire line of hardware based on a trickle of complains on ATF is less sensible than claiming you can judge the aerodynamic of a car by licking your finger and sticking it out the window.

Anytime one of these threads shows up, all we get is a bunch of people saying "my drive died" "my drive is alive" ... and even if you add it all up, it's still meaningless.... why?
(a) with thousands or millions of drives sold, 10 responses is no where near enough to determine a trend.
(b) people who have problems with their IBMs are going to bitch a lot more than people without problems.

The bottom line is, you're not going to find "the truth" on Anandtech... too many people here love to latch onto speculation & rumour as if it's 'fact'...

If you want "the truth" why don't you think sensibly and at least ask people who deal with dozens of IBM drives a week AKA system builders. They'll have a MUCH better idea which hardware is 'reliable' than forum members who at best replace their hardware 2x a year.

Hehe, too true. This can be applied to a whole lot of things.

As far as your question goes, I have heard from system builders the rate is higher than other companies, but that they don't really know if the problem was fixed because they dumped IBM after the problems started. Why risk it was their attitude, and it makes sense to me. Why risk a drive that is known to have problems when you could get a drive that no one is complaining about?

 

[Thor86]

Yep, I'm sure most people who deal with hardware has come across at least 1 dead IBM drive that is not more than 2-3 years old. I know it happened to me, and I hope to people who use them, aren't using them in critical systems. One of my clients used them for their email servers, and all I can say is.... thank GOD for backups.

 

[grant2]

Thor I bet most dealers have come across dead HDs of EVERY brand... failure is a fact of life, that's why "reliable" equipment involves redundant, hot-swappable drives & cpus...

 

[KnowsNothing]

Originally posted by: 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.

I don't think IBM has utilized the pixie dust technology on its desktop drives yet. I thought the just used it for their micro drives, and maybe for their laptop drives.

 

[NateSLC]

I read this thread yesterday evening thinking MYTH, set my data file storage hard drive to defrag. This morning I woke up to a locked PC. After several calls to IBM and running the Drive Fitness test, it's official, my 6 month old 60GB 60GXP has an RMA number.

Pray for my OS drive. It's also a 60 GB 60GXP.

:|