Update on IBM 75GXP Problems

[Guest]

<A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com/" target="_new">StorageReview.com </A>recently posted on their front page:
"<i>We've been trying to ignore what basically amounts to a ton of anecdotal evidence, but things are coming to a head...
The IBM Deskstar 75GXP series may have reliability problems. Its been a recurring theme in the Discussion Forum for more than half a year now. The most interesting post yet belongs to participant Michael75. He's heard from an individual in the Desktop HDD division that IBM's aware of an unusually large amount of problems... especially with the highly-regarded 3-platter unit. He blames it on some ATA controllers. Right</i>"

You can see the post <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://198.76.30.88/jive/sr/thread.jsp?forum=1&thread=11453" target="_new">here</A>.

And <A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/business/01q1/010329/index.html" target="_new">Mike Magee</A>, founder of the popular IT News Site<A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk" target="_new">TheRegister</A> who recently had a falling out with the other people there, has posted <A HREF="http://213.219.40.69/28030104.htm" target="_new">an article</A> about it on his own new website, <A HREF="http://213.219.40.69/" target="_new">The Inquirer</A>.
"<i>DIFFICULTIES RUNNING IBM DTLA Series hard drives appear to have prompted Big Blue to put a stop on production of some of the parts, according to end users.</i>"

Some rather long and emotional threads have broken out at SR about bad IBM drives, some people at the arstechnica forum have had issues with scratching noises as well, and more people have been observing problems in this forum over the last few months too. Some people prefer to think that such issues don't exist. It's a good thing the 75GXP is soon to be replaced by the 60GXP that is just coming out. Hopefully we won't see the same problems.

 

[blah]

Yeah, that is something I cant ignore too; I have 30 and 45 gig drives, 30 one gave me those scratchy sounds once on WinME, I got little confused, formatted C: and Ghosted my 98 partition back again, no sounds since (2 month now). So probably OS or some of the controllers doing something that the GXP cannot handle I guess. Anyway, by far it is a very good drive, I am using Quantums and Maxtors at work and they are good too, but little more noisy, which I don’t really like much.

Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[machow]

I feel... funny about this. I have this DTLA 307030 running fine. Nothing's wrong. Perhaps I'm a lucky one? Well. By the way, what is the IBM's HDD failure rate? 1 in 1000 HDD's?

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This site is cool.

 

[Guest]

For some people, the failure rate has been as high as 4 in 4. Now these are obviously rare cases probably due to hardware incompatibilities, but bad hard drives to this magnitude hasn't been witnessed for quite some time.

 

[machow]

Yeah yeah yeah and how many people who have 100% failure rate of 0% failure rate? I think FAR more people are happy with their HDD than those who have them go kaboom.

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This site is cool.

 

[Guest]

You are probably right, but that doesn't erase the 75GXP's problems that have been getting press lately. It's good to see you had a positive experience with the drive as most people do, but there are are an unusually large amount of computer enthusiasts who wouldn't say the same. It may have to do with the 75GXP's popularity, but not many popular drives in the past had left so many people upset and inconvenienced over their failed drive(s).

 

[machow]

Yeah guess I lose out on that. But somehow, I think people would still buy 75GXPs. I mean, do we know the failure rates for sure? Like from IBM?

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This site is cool.

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't expect Big Blue to be putting out any failure rate statistics any time soon. Especially if they are putting a stop on producing certain parts do to failure problems and they are indeed aware of an unusually large amount of problems as people are suggesting.

Even if they did they probably wouldn't be very credible and they would just be acknowledging a problem they wouldn't want to acknowledge.

 

[machow]

I don't really care as long as mine works fine. But according to your research what are the failure rates? It's hard top predict, but sometimes you do sound like 15% failure rate.

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This site is cool.

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't have the means to provide you with an accurate failure rate. Very few people do. All I can tell you besides the info in my first post is what everybody else can tell you, there is a very unusually large amount of people reporting failed IBM 75GXP hard drives as compared to present and past drives. A large enough amount that it has been driving many to the conclusion that there is some sort of problem with these drives; whether it be a compatibility, reliability, or quality control problem.

 

[Magneto]

I suppose I am one of the "unlucky" ones. I've had my DTLA-307045 45 gig for about 4 months now, and about 2 months ago I got my first taste of the "scratchy" sound. It led to a few bad sectors on my drive, which (luckily for me) ScanDisk found and repaired. The problem is occurring now about once every three weeks or so, and I'm experiencing a few bad sectors here and there on all of my partions. I am in the process of having the drive replaced under warranty, but after reading some of the posts regarding other users that have this problem, I hope that they honor the warranty. This is actually the first that I've heard regarding anyone else having the problem that I am having.
I am running the drive on a Promise ATA100 controller on my Asus A7V. I'm foggy as to why the controller could be thought to be causing bad sectors on the drive. I could understand a corrupted transfer or something like that, but not causing bad sectors that can't be written to any longer.
I'll just to see how this warranty thing goes. Thanks for the post, but I'm almost sorry that I read it. lol.
Phil

 

[Guest]

>>All I can tell you besides the info in my first post is what everybody else can tell you, there is a very unusually large amount of people reporting failed IBM 75GXP hard drives as compared to present and past drives. <<

I've never seen or sold a drive as popular as the IBM 75GXP. For a number of reasons, 1) IDE drives have never been so cheap per Gig and 2) in combination with the fact the drive's access times stand out so much among the competition. With that said, unless you have some numbers the above is subjective and you don't really know what is unusual.

With that said, I'm going against my initial opinion that it was just a matter of a larger number of reports due to the popularity. I think there is some issue with this drive. Is it all IBM's fault? I don't think so. Probably a combination of some controllers and OS along with the drive. Is IBM or anybody else going to admit anything if the finger can be pointed in different directions. Not likely. Like any business everybody would just like to fix the problem and pretend it never exsisted. (Trust me Quantum, Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, Fujitsu, Promise, Abit, etc, etc would all do the same). But the problems being reported are too similar to just be coincidense.

A number of things I think you might can do prevent any problems that might arise with the drive.

1) Do not partition or format these drives off of PCI ATA controller cards (I've experienced problems doing this not just with Promise controllers).

2) Be wary of any problems that might arise when running on an ATA controller card. If the dreaded "scratchy" sound starts to occur or what not, repartion and format the drive if possible and run on a native controller of the board. Running in ATA 66 or even ATA 33 won't exactly kill you, and if it eliminates the problem, it will allow you pinpoint that.

3) Make sure you've applied any IDE patches for your OS and are using current bios and drivers for ATA controllers. (I know .. the ATA100 patch for Win2k is kinda bogus but still).

***check the jumpers 1st then check em again***

 

[machow]

If you guys have problems with IBM hdd please go to Others >> Polls to vote how long your 75GXP has been working. I think that would make a good comparison of failing HDD.

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[Guest]

These drives have a lot of problems???

hmmmm

-- They have found a way to harness the power of a thunderstorm and expell it with great force!--

 

[machow]

This shows how ignorant you are.. I have no problems with 75GXP but others are complaining about it.

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This site is cool.

 

[Guest]

I have also problems with the 30gb drive, the freespace cluster/indeks whatever get corrupted once a week. and i can't enable dma, because i gets me dos drivers and bad perfomance. I think the drive is the problem because it have workede fine.

k7m
athlon 550@722
sblive
g400
192 ram

 

[Guest]

I just talked to IBM about my finiky 45gig drive. They said that computers over 600mhz shut down win98 and winME so fast that the HD can't write the cache. They told me to use a ibm disk program and get a patch from Microsoft. I haven't tested this. By the way the faliure happened on my drive at around 20gigs, where is it happening on yours?

May Fortune Favor The Foolish

 

[machow]

What? Windows shutting down too fast? I think that 75GXP is one of the fastest drive around now and still it cannot cope with it? How about other drives? They are slower and still they could shut down properly. I doesn't make sense to me...

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This site is cool.

 

[Guest]

I agree it worked for 5 months with no problem, but that's what IBM said.

May Fortune Favor The Foolish

 

[Guest]

Well hard drives are designed now days with saftey mechanisms to prevent problems when the drive is shutdown or stopped in mid write. A place for the heads to come to rest. But it is not fail proof.

So if the case which has been noted by Microsoft, the OS does not allow the drive to finish writing what's in the cache before shutting it down, it's inevitable for problems to begin to arise over time. Leave a automatic transmission in neutral and slam the gas then throw it in drive. It probably won't hurt it the first time, maybe not for awhile after many repetitions, but eventually problems with transmission will occur. This is problem that probably can affect other fast drives out there today. But again not as many people are using them, so not as many reports are going to come from them. Nor will it be as easy to lump the similar symptoms that appear to be arising with the 75GXP.

***check the jumpers 1st then check em again***

 

[Matisaro]

my friends 1.33ghz ddr win98se system shut down so fast it was as if we just hit the power, I was shocked(this was right after we built it) i promptly downloaded the 3 second delay patch from the windows update site.

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"

 

[Guest]

Anyone knows where i can find the patch file for windows ME to shut down the computer with a 3 second delay?
I've ruined 3 harddrives in two weeks!!!(gpx 75 45GB)
I tried to locate it on the microsoft web-site but couldn't find it.

Thanks

 

[blah]

Start, Windows Update, in the opened IE window click
<b>PRODUCT UPDATES</b>
Go here to download and install the latest updates for your computer.
Select <b>Windows IDE Hard Drive Cache Package</b>


Post, we'll do the "search"...