Is my 40 GB IBM 60gxp on its way out?

[chilledout]

I have noticed that my drive that i got 6 months ago is developing bad sectors. I have not tried to do a low level format yet becuase i have a large amount of data on one of the partitions and the Ibm utilitie formats the whole drive including paritions. I was scared this would happen when i read about loads of people haveing Ibm drive go down on them a month after i got the drive.

i am therfore considering buying a

Maxtor 740X Hard Disk 40GB

but before i buy this drive i would like to know if there have been any reliability problems with it as i need a reliable hard drive.

cheers

[Monaco]

I've never owned an IBM drive- they seem to have nothing but problems. They are awesome when they work correctly, but that seems to be very rare. If you get bad sectors after only 6 months, I would try to return it if possible.

I've owned 3 Maxtor drives with no complaints. I also like Western Digital- I have a WD drive from my old Pentium120 that still works like a champ.

[muddocktor]

If I were you, I'd back up EVERYTHING that you can't live without on that hard drive before it ides. I just received back a 75 GXP 30 gig hard drive to replace 1 that I RMA'ed to them last month. What you need to do is go to IBM's site and d/l the dft(drive fitness test) program and run it. It will install itself to a floppy and check the hard drive for problems when booted from this floppy. If it finds a problem it will generate an error report that you can send online to IBM. I had no problems with the RMA process with IBM and it took around 3 weeks for the replacement hard drive to be returned to me. I have quit buying IBM hard drives though; I don't trust their drives now, even the new 60GXP.

[xdroorsx]

i must admit, this is definitely not news i enjoy reading. before i bought both of mine, i read all sorts of reviews from reputable sites, and they all praised the 60gxp?? :mad: :mad: ah, i guess i know what NOT to get now that i'm in the market for a multimedia storage drive :rolleyes:

[wdouglas]

I've had a few probles with data corruption on my twin 40GB IBM drives but I believe that to be as a result of running them in a RAID0 configuration. I'll probably be in a better position to comment if I changed to a more reliable config.

I've heard plenty of good things about these drives and have heard that they are amongst the most reliable drives around. Comments on various sites in the UK including www.overclockers.co.uk recommend them highly.

[chilledout]

on overclockers they praise the drive because they are selling it whereas the forum on the same site was littered with many comlaints about problems with the drives.

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Originally posted by chilledout
on overclockers they praise the drive because they are selling it whereas the forum on the same site was littered with many comlaints about problems with the drives.

Overclockers.com doesn't sell anything. And all of the reviews I've read praise the Deckstar. It really IS a high preformance drive. But it has a glitch. This glitch didn't show up while reviews were being written, and in fact IBM is now facing a lawsuit about the defective drive.

Even MaximumPC retracted it's praise in the Jan 2002 issue due to IBM failures. There was no way anyone could've known it had a few issues. The new 80gig'ers and above are supposed to be glitch free, but give it time before you buy one.

[NotHisTechiness]

it was the 75gxp series that was faulty if i'm not mistaken while the 60gxp series was the one where everyone was raving about. i have 2 40 gig ibm 60gxps and i've never encountered a problem the entire time i've had both. still good drives in my opinion.

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Indeed the 75GXP is the drive IBM is facing the lawsuit over, but I belive the 60 also has problems. There was something on the front page here for a bit that also had to do with the IBM drives...but I am too lazy to search for it. I'm a firm believer that the IBM drives are VERY good...they just ran in to a problem.

You also want to avoid LL Formats as much as possible. ALL hard drives come from the mfg with bad sectors...every single one. The mfg marks all of the bad ones, and a few more (if necessary) to make a drive conform to size. These bad sector marks are read by windows or any other OS, not to be written to. A LL Format removes these marks, and may not be marked back correctly with a very basic M$ scandisk.

IMHO

[chilledout]

Not overclockers.com, but overclockers.co.uk this site does sell them and is where i bought mine from.

sory about the confusion

[thefly]

Dude, download the smart defender program from IBM web page and run it. It will tell you write away if the drive is about to die on you. I called ibm for a dying drive and they asked me to run the drive fitness test which the drive failed. Then they told me to format the drive and that would fix it. That's a load of bs. I know when a drive starts to make bad read write noises a format won't do anything. So i mentioned that it fails the smart defender test and the gave my an rma number right away.

Don't wait! back up your data pronto.

Also, if you push the tech on the phone and ask to talk to a manager they will cross ship you a drive. ( send one then you send the dead one back) at first they wanted me to send mine in first. Anyway good luck.


SMART Defender (link is also good for the drive fitness test)

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

[Monaco]

all I can piece together about why the GXP drives have problems is that there is some kind of problem at the plant where they are all made. Not just 75GXP, which has it's own problems as shadow mentioned, but all the GXPs series that were made in that plant within a certain time period had trouble. Probably something dumb like dust contamination or something. At least, that was the conclusion I drew after chasing down threads in strange places and checking IBM docs and stuff.

I bet that if you buy an IBM drive, and it's been manufactured recently, it will be fine. IBM definately knows about the problems and has no doubt fixed it by now to avoid another lawsuit. I have faith!:D

[Yodums]

All these problems for the start of the new year.

Back everything up and see how it goes.

[Shmuck]

Hey, having similar problems.

What is RMA?
And would it apply to a WD 40GB i bought about 1 mo. ago?

Thanks,

Tim
Socket A M830 Sis 735
96 F load, 88 F idle
Athlon T-bird 950 @ 946 MHz 100 FSB
110 F Load, 86 F idle
192 MB PC100 slug-o RAM
GeForce 2 MX200 64 MB w/shiny new crystal orb (175/165)
WD 40GB 7200
Creative SB PCI512

[scooter4n]

I just got a GXP60 a month ago. No prolems, but I'll keep my eye on it.

[LiGhTBoY]

I read all these answers and I have two questions. First which is the faster: 75GXP or 60GXP ? Secondly if I buy one of these drives and watercool it with the Koolance case( I'm planning on buying one for my :burn: Athlon XP 1700+ ) will it still have problems?