I bought two 45gb 75GXP's, to use with a KT7A RAID. The first one went in six weeks. I turned on the machine one day and the Highpoint BIOS reported the bad news "stripe missing". So I did the fitness test and it gave me codes for an RMA. So off to the IBM site to see what I have to do. One thing is buy the "proper" packaging from a site that they have a link to. $11.00 for a box, foam inside, and a anti-static bag. There is three pages to print just on how to box and send the drive back (RMA on the outside, must be shipped with tracking, etc) Another $6.45 (US) to ship it.
My first misery was waiting for the box to ship it in. The vendor had them on backorder. It took three weeks to get it. The day I got the box to ship it in, I got a nasty-gram via email from IBM warning me that the RMA will expire in five days.
Well after I shipped it off it took three weeks to get my replacement. I got a 60GXP that holds 61.5 gb. Now what do I do I should have (or so I have read) a matched set for RAID-0. Then the second old drive starts making noise. I tell them and they just tell me too bad untill the fitness test makes a RMA.
I started to look around at places like storagereview (old well read storage site). I check the forums there and find posts like "Lets start a class action" I find hundreds of posts linked to the IBM 75GXP's. I have found the same thing in all the sites I have looked through so far. This is not just the US, I found it in the UK as well (and here).
There has to something to it if you find hundreds and hundreds of posts that are pretty much the same thing.
One thing I did find out is that they (IBM) were replaceing the 75GXP's with the same untill they started to get the replacements back from the same customers.
Just because it is IBM does not mean they can't get a bad part here and there out of the thousands they make. I just wish they would be up front about it like Intel did with the Pentium 90's (I think it was the 90's)and just replace them. The worst part is they insult me by saying I am one of a very few, when I know better. If they lose me as a customer it will not be for making a bad part, it will be for making me jump through a bunch of hoops to get a bad part replaced, and telling me a lie. I bought IBM not just for a quality part, but quality service as well.
There was talk of it being tied with VIA chips, but I have not found the numbers yet. The windows shutdown problem has be discounted as people that had the patch have had the same problem as well.