Sighhhh, I've lost my 4th IBM 60GXP

[aka1nas]

Well, here I am again, drive number quatro just failed on me. It doesn't even get seen by the Bios on bootup. I know these drives have problems, but isn't 4 of them a little much for me to have lost? I have added cooling to the second 2 I received after the first 2 died. I even upgraded my PSU from a 300 watt Antec to a 350 watter out of paranoia. They all had some form of the clicking sound. Any other ideas about how I could prevent this from happening or am I just really really unlucky?

 

[John]

What are you doing to destroy these drives? moving the PC while the drive is working is BAD. :Q

 

[aka1nas]

I've been really careful with them. I haven't been to a LAN party for like 2 months, right b4 I put drives 3 and 4 in. They haven't been moved at all. It seems that my drives dont last more than 2 months. I am seriously getting ticked about this. The only thing I can think of is maybe my promise controller thats built into my Soyo dragon has soemhting to do with it. I did use that with all of them. My seagate baracudda II has been my main drive, and thats on the VIA controller. I'd use that for my other HDs and my burner, except that I cannot seem to get DMA to enable on the VIA controller. I really can't think of anything else that would be affecting them.

 

[John]

I had an acquaintance of mine lose 6+ HDD's in a relatively short span of time. I suggested he change his powersupply and it fixed the problem. Just a thought.

 

[PlatinumGold]

my only question is, why do you keep buying IBM DRIVES?

 

[oldfart]

That is odd. I've had a 30 Gig 75GXP, 40 Gig 60GXP, and now a 60 Gig 60GXP. None have failed. No drive cooling, and I run a 39.5 MHz PCI bus. 4 in a row??....something is not right.

 

[aka1nas]

I don't keep buying them. I just keep RMAing them and getting replacements, which die after about 2 months. However, I've had to pay shipping each time, so its starting to add up. Also, like I said above, I already upgraded the PSU about a week or so ago.

 

[Insane3D]

"That is odd. I've had a 30 Gig 75GXP, 40 Gig 60GXP, and now a 60 Gig 60GXP. None have failed. No drive cooling, and I run a 39.5 MHz PCI bus. 4 in a row??....something is not right. "

I agree with oldfart. Every one of my systems is overclocked and running PCI speeds between 36 and 39mhz with no issues. I've got two 30gb 75GXP's that I've had for about a year and a half, and two 40GB 60GXP's that have been running great for close to a year. All of them are on overclocked PCI buses and run like a champ. One of my 75GXP's chirps at me from time to time...but it's done it for months and it is fine. I run Norton Systemworks Pro 2002 on all my systems and regularly scan for any drive problems and back up all my stuff. Something is definately up if you have had four in a row die like that. Have you even tried to run IBM's DFT program to see what it says?

 

[lastig21]

The computer department of my school uses only ibm drives, and of course several of them have died. You can start to see a pattern with the serial numbers of the drives. As they buy in bulk, we have many drives that come off the line in a row. Of the drives that die in the same time frame (2 months or so), there are usually 2 or 3 that die within a 10 number span of each other. I don't know if the pattern has kept up. Since I moved to another department, we use Maxtors

 

[aka1nas]

I have run the DFT on some of them. Drive #2 started getting bad sectors, and after a few times of having DFT make me zero out the drive and reformat, I sent it back. The last 2 drives have totally failed and cannot be seen at all, so I can't run the DFT on them.

 

[aka1nas]

I'm kinda hoping that it was the PSU and that the new one will fix my problem. I just put drive #5 in after I put the new PSU. I think that drive #4 is staying put, because I don't wanna blow another $10 in shipping so IBM can ship me another drive that will last 2 months.

 

[drees]

Well, a flaky PSU can fail a drive, but that's most likely not the problem here.

Read this article on how to choose a PSU, which brand 350 unit did you pick up?

The IBM GXPs just fail a lot, not a whole lot you can do. Active cooling may help, how warm does the drive get?

 

[Zlash]

IBM's are failing all over the place, go read the THG harddrive section for 100s of stories about these crappy drives. Consider yourself lucky if you've gotten one to work for any length of time =).

 

[Mitzi]

The IBM GXPs just fail a lot, not a whole lot you can do. Active cooling may help, how warm does the drive get?

My drive 70GXP died last November, before I recieved the RMA replacement I installed a drive bay cooler- fingers crossed the new drive has not died, yet....

 

[Jerboy]

For some reason, I feel I'm sooo glad I returned my 20GB IBM 7200RPM and exchanged it for 40GB Quantum quite a while ago.

I got the IBM for $99, then found 40GB Quantum for same price so I got it exchanged.

 

[RalfHutter]

I have 4 60GXP drives (2x20, 2x40) and they're all running fine (knock wood) with an Enermax 465 PSU. System is overclocked, but bus speed is locked at 37Mhz. Drives are run in removable mobile racks with little 40mm cooling fans in them.

I have to confess that I've just recently bought a couple of Maxtor D740X's (a 40 and an 80) to play with. I figure I'll at least have them around if any of my IBMs takes a dump.

 

[bocamojo]

aka1nas,
IBM's disclaimer clearly states that, "playing street hockey with this hard disk drive can seriously affect it's ability to operate for any specific length of time..."

Seriously, I have a 60GXP (40GB), and it hasn't given me a problem once. I have read quite a few posts from those who have had troubles with them, though. I don't have a cooler on my HD (although my system does have 6 fans), and don't have it running on a RAID controller card (just using built in ATA100 controller). My drive did give me a scare once, but it turned out to be a bad IDE cable... If I had more than one RMA, I would switch over to Maxtor. Since I haven't though, I'll stick with my good ole' IBM drive for now...

 

[Eug]

What bus speed are you running?

I find that once you hit about 38, drives in general start to die off, if not immediately, then a few months down the line. Well, not completely true - these lose data, but often work fine after a reformat. Under 37, most drives I've dealt with are OK (but not all).

By the way, I have two IBM 75 GXPs and one 34 GXPs. Drives that have not survived this rig include Fujitsu, Quantum, and Maxtor. The Maxtor died at 38.3. My Quantum didn't like UNDERclocking in particular - flaky at 30 MHz.

 

[aka1nas]

I'm not overclocking this system at all. Since the first 2 drives died, I haven't trusted them in RAID 0 and have been running the controller in ATA100 mode..

 

[Eug]

<< I'm not overclocking this system at all. Since the first 2 drives died, I haven't trusted them in RAID 0 and have been running the controller in ATA100 mode.. >>

Hmmm... Raid 0 is also a disaster waiting to happen... errr... or already has happened.

Sucks to have 4 go in a row though. Very unusual. Out of interest's sake what mobo and controller? Promise? Abit?

 

[dowxp]

<<

<< I'm not overclocking this system at all. Since the first 2 drives died, I haven't trusted them in RAID 0 and have been running the controller in ATA100 mode.. >>

Hmmm... Raid 0 is also a disaster waiting to happen... errr... or already has happened.

Sucks to have 4 go in a row though. Very unusual. Out of interest's sake what mobo and controller? Promise? Abit? >>



heh, running 2x75gb 75gxp on promise raid for anime servin' , 45gb 75gxp as boot and 60gb maxtor as zip\mp3. all on a 160fsb. i dont know the pci speed. prolly high or something. i've had a few die on me though.. but im not reallly worried.

 

[jonmcc33]

You should have gotten a Seagate Barracuda IV instead.

 

[CKDragon]

I have a 30 Gig 75GXP running in my girlfriend's system and a 40 Gig 60 GXP running in my parent's system...

If either one of them failed, trust me, I'd have heard about it

CK

 

[aka1nas]

You know what, I think you guys have convinced me that my old PSU was bad. I put it in about 6 months ago, and my system has never been 100% stable under win2k or XP throughout numerous installs. I have been getting CRC errors from optical drives, BSODs galore, and file and OS corruption. I have just swapped out mobo's for the Gigabyte ga7dxr I won from AMD and I just reinstalled XP on the 5th IBM(no clicking so far! It's also a little coincidental that drive #4 only started clicking when I put it in this computer, it ran for months in the other system very quietly.). Here is the big question though....exactly what could have been damaged by a flaky PSU? are my cards gonna be ok? Most of them are less than 3 months old as i did a lot of upgrading around x-mas. I think that the Soyo mobo may be flaky now so I'm not gonna use that.

 

[staticfly]

ok, ive had 3 go. Sad. The fourth was well on its way, but i seem to have saved it.

I took all other devices off teh 12v rails (there arn't any on the at connector are there?)

Anyway, i think the psu has something to do with it. It seems the controller on the hd is very fragile. oh well, no more ibms for me