STOP Recommending IBM Hard Drive!

[AL77]

I have a question to those who have had problems with their hard drives recently (not just IBM 75 GXP). Did you buy OEM or retail? If it was OEM and you ordered it online, was it shipped properly packed? I can't help but feel that a properly packed retail box is the way to go for HDDs; or, do the OEM's come tightly packed in a styrofoam box like the retail equivalents?

ktchong
What DaddyG said makes sense. Speed and data density are increasing at a very quick pace. Given this rate of progression, it's inevitable that all manufacturers will have some lemons in a particular HDD series; although I'll grant that some manufacturers are probably better than others in quality control, reliability, etc. IBM is generally considered a quality manufacturer in the area of HDDs in the industry (e.g., trade publications, user experiences), so I wouldn't give up on them just yet.


<< I maintain that IBM 75GXP has numerous serious quality issues >>


Well, I really don't know. How can you be so certain based on one sample. But there have been many more positive IBM 75GXP experiences than negative in this forum alone; I would have to say you just got unlucky. Even if you get a bad one again, it still would be fallacy to state the entire series has &quot;serious quality issues&quot;, but, it's perfectly reasonable to start to look elsewhere, i.e., a different manufacturer.



<< People in here should stop recommending IBM hard drive already >>


By this reasoning, nobody would be recommending any hard drive, as there is always a small group of users that had a bad experience(s) with a given manufacturer.

 

[andrey]

I have IBM 75GXP 30Gb on Asus A7V with 1GHz TBird (not overclocked) and it works flawlessly for me so far. Not noisy(compared to Western Digital, Maxtor I have now and Seagate I had before) and very fast. It is connected to onboard Promise 100 IDE though. As far as other people's suggestion and benchmarks, they help, but not always. Originally when first Seagate 9.1Gb 7200rpm drive came out, everyone was raving about it, how great it was. I needed hard drive at that time and decided to get it. I had to RMA it twice, it was very noisy and was getting extremely hot. Although it was 7200rpm, it seemed slower than my 17.5Gb Maxtor 5400rpm. IBM was completely different story for me. So far it has been the best I drive I had hands-on experience: fast, quite and performs to its expectations and if I'll need one more hard drive, it is definetely will be IBM 75GXP series. I hope that helps,

 

[DaddyG]

One further point, HDD manufacturers have cross licensing AND cross manufacturing agreements. I know that IBM and Maxtor has/had an agreement and others do as well. Its entirely possible that the 'Official' manufacturer, didn't actually make the drive.

 

[damac]

i have the same drive on a cusl2 motherboard using win98se for a few months now and haven't had any problems.

 

[Sunner]

How many drives do you think IBM makes in a year?
Several millions of them most likely.

Now, its pretty obvious that alot(in numbers, not percent) are gonna be DOA's, or go bad just shortly after you start using them, but the same can be applied to CPU's, mobo's or any other item you purchase.

 

[Rellik]

Well, more stats:

MY Drives:
IBM DDRS 4.3 GB U2W SCSI --flawless for 20 months
IBM DNES 9 GB U2W SCSI --flawless for 12 months
My BAD DRIVES:
Quantum 2.1 GB

Friend´s Drives:

IBM DJNA 9.1 GB ATA66 --flawless
IBM DTTA 20 GB ATA66 --flawless
IBM 6.4 GB ATA33 --flawless
IBM 6.4 GB ATA33 --flawless
IBM DTTA 10 GB ATA33 --flawless
IBM DTLA 46 GB ATA100--flawless

Friends BAD DRIVES:
2 Samsung drives, 1 Quantum 6.4GB

all drives were used as file and boot drive under Win9X, Win NT 4 and Win2k as well as Linux.

I am sorry that u got a bad drive, but so far, IBM has certainly delivered WAY MORE GOOD Drives then Quantum or Maxtor. I like the new maxtor series, but their old series (8gb) was really bad. Same for Quantum. A retailer i know who installs company workstations reports bad experiences with Quantum too...

 

[Adul]

I will not stop recomending them cause on your one single ad experience. IBM drives have been very reliable overall. Quality is top notch as well has perfomance. just because you happened to have a bad driv doesn't mean that company drives all suck. That is a stupid analogy based on a very limit experience of a single drive! So please don't go about shooting something down cause your happened to fail. It happens with all the other companies, So deal with it! Also, doa search on these forums. See how many drives that are mde by IBM that have failed. see how many have been mator, WD, seagate, etc... You wont find many IBM drives at all.

 

[JaiKnight]

Rellik: That wouldn't have happened to be a Quantum Bigfoot drive that died on you would it?

 

[Rellik]

JaiKnight, Yes, It was a Bigfoot..

 

[JaiKnight]

Heh, figured...at work all our old DeskPros had them...EVERY single last one of them has died, and I had the pleasure of dismantling all of them for the heck of it They've got POWERFUL magnets in them!

 

[Killer Ape]

I don't know if others have made these points yet, but HDD failure, as most of us know, is not always the fault of the drive manufacturer.

Obviously, if you overclock, don't assume a drive designed for a 33MHz bus will work at 37MHz, 41MHz, etc. A HDD that will run perfectly for 5 years may die in 5 weeks on a 41MHz bus.

Not all mobos have perfect IDE implementations, particularly ATA100 and RAID.

Not all add-in controllers have perfect IDE implementations.

Not all OSes handle EVERY HDD perfectly (i.e. WinME and 2K issues with the IBMs - this is a bit of a cart and horse debate).

Not all HW drivers work perfectly.

Not all HDDs work well if they're jammed tight to other components and receive poor airflow.

Not all HDDs work well if they're mounted poorly and vibrate excessively.

Not all ribbon cables are created equal, or installed correctly.

Etc., etc.

Any of the above will lead to data corruption and/or out right failure of the drive. There's a long list of suspects to weed through before you can just assume the HDD has/is the smoking gun.

Just for the record, my 30GB 75GPX is great after only 2 months on a Promise ATA100 in Win98, as is my 10.2GB 7200 RPM Maxtor ATA33 after 16 months, 12 of which it was running at 41MHz. Go figure .

 

[Zenmervolt]

As for IBM drives: until my ThinkPad arrives (if it ever does) I am using a PS/2 (80486DX/2 66MHz) circa 1992 to type papers and script HTML on in my dorm room so I don't have to bother with the computing labs for anything other than printing and the internet. I measure uptime on the PS/2 in months and have had no problems with it. The two SCSI HDDs (1 1Gig and the original 512Meg) are fine, in fact I only use the origninal 512 Meg drive since that's the one with my OS (OS/2 Warp 3) on it. The fact that this machine is still working perfectly after 8 years is either a testament to IBM's quality or to my luck, and knowing my luck I believe the former. BTW, before I got it a year and a half ago it was employed as a business fileserver running Warp Connect 4.0.

Aaron Meyer