IBM Drives & Reliability

[kgraeme]

The point is not that IBM drives suck. Or that WD suck. Any manufacturer can suck and any can be good. The point is that if people don't talk about their successes or failures, then others won't be informed. Companies like IBM sure aren't going to say, "avoid all of our GXP drives, they suck."

Even of the models that fail at a higher rate than others, there will still be a high number that don't fail. If it's a significantly measurable rate of failure, then it's too high. Say IBM sold 1 million 60GXPs and they have a failure rate of only 10%. That's 100,000 bad drives! That's more than enough for every person on these forums, and that's way too many!

So for those of you happy with your drives, GREAT! That doesn't mean though that there isn't a problem.

 

[CraigRT]

Maxtor man.. I have never had any problems with Maxtors.. funny that.. IBM used to be known for awesome drives... anymore they are just plain scary.

 

[mcveigh]

I would have thought with the size of the forums the drives would be scsi?

I need to go back and reread one of those articles on the anandtech hardware

 

[Haircut]

Wow, good old IBM drives eh?

I have a DTLA-307030 and while it has doen me well for the last year and a half it seems that every other time I boot up it wants to run chkdsk and seems to be producing a few errors each time, I don't know whether this is the drive on it's way out, but I have backed up all my data and am planning on buying a Maxtor 80 gig in the next few weeks just in case.

 

[Jason Clark]

Actually, the only machines have have SCSI in them are the db servers. There is no need to put SCSI drives in web servers unless you are serving alot of files. With dynamic driven sites their are just templates that get their data from the database. So there really is little to no I/O load on the web servers, it's just CPU and MEMORY there, the db takes the I/O load as in essence, it's holding all the data.

 

[Windogg]

Wow, seems no one is immune.

I think I'll fix the 75GXP FAQ to kill the typos one day.

Windoggg

 

[Red Dawn]

<< There is no need to put SCSI drives in web servers >>

Unless you are tired of replacing crapped out IDE Drives and want to use something engineered to endure the rigors of a server enviroment. Penny wise pound foolish.

 

[Jason Clark]

Actually, since there are virtually no "rigors", except for running 24/7, most decent IDE drives will do just fine. Although SCSI can last longer, a good IDE drive will work. There are drives that were up there for over 3 years flawless. IBM is the problem not IDE. Most IDE drives come with a minimum of a 3 year reliability rating, our upgrade frequency has been almost yearly.

Ah well, it will be fixed in a matter of days.

 

[Devistater]

<< The point is not that IBM drives suck. Or that WD suck. Any manufacturer can suck and any can be good. The point is that if people don't talk about their successes or failures, then others won't be informed. Companies like IBM sure aren't going to say, "avoid all of our GXP drives, they suck."

Even of the models that fail at a higher rate than others, there will still be a high number that don't fail. If it's a significantly measurable rate of failure, then it's too high. Say IBM sold 1 million 60GXPs and they have a failure rate of only 10%. That's 100,000 bad drives! That's more than enough for every person on these forums, and that's way too many!

So for those of you happy with your drives, GREAT! That doesn't mean though that there isn't a problem. >>



Well, IBM 75gxp, 60gxp, and 120gxp drives all suck, or at least suck worse than most others. The 75gxp is the series that started the whole mess, and with IBM putting the <20,000 hours lifetime thing in the specs (i.e. the 333 power on hours a month gives 5 years expected product life) in the 60gxp and 120gxp drive official specs, well... that's the 3 latest generations from IBM, so basically if you buy new drives from IBM you are taking a big risk. Old drives from IBM are fine, I know I have one or two that have never given me a problem, they are several years old. BTW, I agree that whatever the failure rate is, its way too high, unfortunately I don't think IBM will ever release the real failure rates, they have too much to lose, and very little to gain by doing so. Perhaps the class action lawsuit will get some data out of them in a settlement.

 

[AGodspeed]

My Barracuda and Fireball are doing just great for me.

I'm thinking of going WD soon though. SCSI maybe...

 

[Carrot44]

So Zuni will we be seeing a bunch of IBM Drives up for sale on the Sale Forum?

 

[Martin]

<< Umm reread my message people I said I wouldn't mind one for <STRONG>HOME</STRONG> . As said they are all coming out of the at servers this week. >>




I like those for home usage too. IMO they give you the best size/weight ratio of any doorstop. Oh sure, the Yellow Pages come close, but they're to flexible and bulky for me.

 

[olin]

Right after buying my IBM drive, I started noticing all the bad comments
about the IBMs, so I sold it! It was new, still in the sealed protective
mositure bag. I got rid of it more for lack of printed info. on the retail box than the bad comments. I noticed date of manuf. was dec. 2001
and now I'm curious as hell as to why there was no printed reference as to whether it was a 60 or 75 GXP. Nothing was printed on the box or instructions except that it was a 40 GB drive, 7200 RPM, Deskstar.
I bought the drive at mwave.com and it was not OEM - it was the Retail IBM.
In retrospect, because of the lawsuit, and being made just a few months ago, do think IBM deliberately left off 60 or 75 GXP, and which one is all the fuss about or is the fuss about both?
My previous IBM drives were all quite and I'll miss that. My new Maxtor
seems to be more loud.
Best wishes,
olin

 

[Devistater]

Well, it seems that the problem started with the 75gxp (the older generation) but apparently still continues to some degree in the 60gxp and now the 120gxp. No one knows how large the problem really is, and IBM isn't saying, and probably never will say. To me, the main problem is the <20,000 power on hours "expected product life" they publish for the drives (which is barely two years if you run the drive 24/7). Read some of my above comments for the links to IBM official specs and exactly what they say. I like this though, found this on hardocp. If you go to RMA a hard drive and accidently type in the serial from another IBM product, you void its warranty!
http://www.storage.ibm.com/warranty/jsp/arma31.jsp?ibmer=0


<< This page can only be used for HDD/Microdrive products. Please note "Any RMA created via this page for Non - HDD/Microdrive products will be rejected and your warranty voided". >>

 

[ILikeSprite]

How about Seagate drives? I have heard good things about them.......