SEMI - 75gig 7200 Deskstar 149.99

[ashneel]

bestbuy has the WD 120GB for 199+tax Plus you get a 100 GIFT CARD never expires.

so total is around $115 with tax not bad for a $120GB.

to bad i hate breastbuy

 

[Dran]

<< Does this mean that the drives with lower capacities are less likely to scr3w up? >>



I honestly don't know the answer to that. Having only 1 or 2 platters may help alleviate some of the heat, but I really couldn't say. Most of the reported failures were on 45GB and larger models, though, if that offers any reassurance.



<< Wouldn't you think that IBM has corrected this issue and all the new drives and repaired drives will not fail from this particular type of breakdown? I find it hard to imagine that IBM would still be selling a HD model that they KNOW is going to most likely fail in a year and they will have to repair... >>



The 75GXP line was replaced with the 60GXP series, and shouldn't be in production any longer. The 60GXPs don't appear to be nearly as likely to suffer from the same issue, judging by the commentary in newsgroups and in reviews.



<< Aside from the ONE class action (which has spawned about a million identical articles), what else has been found on the entire GXP line. Are there any sources out there besides Billy Joe Jim Bob, who swears he has 50 drives running Quake3 24/7, that can attest to this? Otherwise it seems like piling on to me. >>



Honestly, greg, all I can offer you is what I watched unfolding at the time the failures were happening. I've compiled a few links to Google's newsgroup archive, you can read them for yourself and make your own conclusion.

Title indicates the keywords I used to perform the searches:
75GXP failure - 1280 posts
75GXP fail - 805 posts
75GXP RMA - 521 posts
75GXP died - 311 posts
75GXP dead - 460 posts
75GXP failing - 553 posts

Undoubtedly, a number of those posts are going to be duplicates in different searches, but suffice it to say that this is more than just a handful of rednecks having a problem with the 75GXP series.

I read several of the newsgroups that will come up in all/any of those searches, have for several years, and was reading them when the reports of failures began to DELUGE the groups. A lot of very skilled people were having some serious problems, and were VERY unhappy. A good percentage of the people who posted reports of problems were IT buyers and professionals, too, who'd purchased several 75GXPs and had more than half of them fail within weeks... or days. Not running games, just ordinary office work, in ordinary office machines, that worked with prior and subsequent drives.

And this was just what was hitting the fan in the newsgroups. I'm sure you can find the same in just about any web forum you care to search.

As for my own experience, I never bought a 75GXP. I didn't have the money at the time. I do know my science, though, and what I described above is not only possible, but VERY likely if there's even the slightest defect or error in manufacturing or design. GFMR technology is very sensitive, and the most minute alteration in a platter's physical dimensions can render an entire HDD unusable, especially when you increase the areal density. My explanation isn't so much supposition as it is conclusion based on the evidence and a working knowledge of HDD technologies. The results are reproducable on any working HDD with GFMR heads.

Er... don't try that at home, kids. You'll have to RMA it.

Given all of that, I would use a 75GXP, if the price were right, but I'd have a bay cooler on it at all times to keep it as cool as possible. Heat is the killer. But I'd darn sure have backups going on a nightly basis, just in case.

 

[DJwalmart]

I have heard quite a few rumors about the 75 GXP but don't confuse that with the 60 GXP. I have had my 60 GXP for about 8-9 months and it has never failed me. Fairly fast and not excessivly expsensive, IMO it's a good buy.

 

[Tarobap]

Don't believe the hype . . . I just TODAY sent in my IBM 60 GXP RMA cuz it started making this buzzing sound that told me it was almost dead. I jumped on the outpost 80GB WD 7200 for $125 after MIR deal a couple of days ago to replace it.

My 60 GXP was working "perfectly" as some of you put it for six months as well . . . well until last week. SCREW IBM and their HDs! :|

 

[greg]

>>Undoubtedly, a number of those posts are going to be duplicates in different searches, but suffice it to say that this is more than just a handful of rednecks having a problem with the 75GXP series.

I wonder. In my other life I was an experimental psychologist and professor. My favorite lecture story is that of micrometeroids. In Washington state a psychologist wanted to document rumors and the power of suggestion. To make a long story short, the researchers contacted the media and alerted car owners to shield their windshields overnight because of the perseid meteor showers - the showers produced micrometeoroids that would crack and dimple windshields becuase of strong concentration over Washington. What happened? Millions of dollars worth of insurance claims and other hysteria. Of course there were no meteoroids, but people amazingly produced the cracked and dimpled windshields for repair. The researcheres told of the hoax a week later when things got really out of hand.

Here, we have little in the way of factual evidence. I have owned all makes of Hard drvies going back to Conner, and none have systematcially blown up more than others. Until I see something different than the exact response I saw from the Washington folks, I question mass hysteria based on a single C/A lawsuit. Just a few months ago the GXPs were the golden children of the drive world. It takes only one perosn screaming witch to influence the whole town. Here's a thought, there are millions of IBM gxp drives in circulation, one wonders what the exact distribution is. If it very high, we'd expect to see high failure rates. Now everyone knows "someone" who had a array of 500 drvies and all of them have failed. But...it seems like everyone also swears that X drive is better than Y and X has never failed. Hmm. It also seems that I happen to be the only one who ever had X drive fail.

 

[Coca-cola Bear]

I would personally stay away from the 45 and 75 gig 75GXP's from IBM. I've had a couple of them go out for no obvious reasons. I've seen way too many comments of identical problems that warrent that this is a problem drive. If you do have one of these drives just keep an eye on your drives they just appear to go south out of the blue. You usually have bad sectors just after some noise. Really too bad the IBM drives were really fast and quiet.

 

[dtoff]

i have had 3 of the 60gxp models fail on me. i just checked out my raid after reading this post and low and behold one had failed (the 3rd one) I can tell this is because of heat, at leat this failure. this drive was in a hard drive enclosure and the fan started making noise and subsuquently died (which i didn't know) and the drive has over heated. im replacing the bay enclosure and i will test the drive using IBM's hard drive utility. i hope it will be fine i don't want to have to ship it back to them. i will say that last time i did they airbourne expressed the drive back to me so it was gone for like 4 days so.... and i would also like to note that the first drive that died didn't go right to ibm. it went back to the OEM i got it from and it suprisingly took 4 weeks to get it back and when i got it back it had the same manufacturing month on it (May, and this was last month) so maybe i have had 2 drives ligitamently fail. this is the first time i have had one die in my raid. luckly its a raid 5 so i should be ok. man im glad i didn't delete the files i put on to raid and that i just copied them over so if i have lost the raid i didn't really lose anything.