IBM T23 laptop - Travelstar hard drive issue

[tennesota]

I am noticing a disturbing trend with a batch of laptops I support; they are IBM model T23 with 30GB Travelstar hard drives. I am seeing a lot of data corruption [Win2K] and an occasional hard drive failure.

Anyone here have any experience supporting this model lappie or any model using Travelstar hdd's? I wonder if this is the 'tip of the iceberg' for a huge problem going forward.

 

[TlitJ]

I have a Dell 600m (my first laptop, ever). I originally had a 30 gig Hitachi/IBM Travelstar that began getting bad sectors. It would make a horrible clicking sound for like 6 seconds every once in a while and no hard drive activity would go on during these 6 second intervals. They would happen ever 5 minutes or so.

I returned it for a new drive. They gave me a 60 gig Hitachi/IBM Travelstar that did the same thing. I have currently leveled off at 20 KB of bad sectors on this one, but it still runs slower than usual.

I'm thinking of just replacing it will another brand as I have no confidence in Hitachi/IBM laptop hard drives.

Also, I thought I remember a news article about Hitachi admitting they have higher than normal failure rates with these drives, but I might have dreamt it.

 

[tennesota]

Had another come in today with data corruption. I don't know if this is a problem with the hard drive, firmware, or controller.