IBM RANT!

[GroundZero3]

Jaysin, not only do Italian girls rule, we also kick **** when provoked

yikes


note to self. do not make Socalgal angry.

JaYsin

[BBA]

Ouch...I bet someone at IBM has ringing ears right now

I have never had a bad IBM drive personally, but there was a period last year where a shipment of bad IBM's were recalled after they were on the market already.

I have seen a whole slew of bad Maxtor drives, and a few bad WD drives...well, I cant really say about the WD drives, because both bad ones were my in room mates computer...one went bad, he rma'd it, then the other went bad a month later...turned out his power supply was bad. He put a new power supply in it and never had a problem since.

I can't really say about Maxtor either, because I have one here thats 5 years old and still kicking **** ( one of the first of the UDMA33 models ). Of course, teh slew of bad ones are from work...but I almost expect to see a few bad drives out of a the few thousand PC's we have with Maxtor drives in them...so percentage wise, they all probably have problems on the same scale.

[Fingers]

I just lost a 4 month old Western Digital 40GB ATA-100 7200. It was my first bad drive ... EVER.

I was able to recover fairly gracefully, although it was a little time consuming.... no hard feeling toward WD... yet

[cyclone2]

add another recomendation for Maxtor, Super drives IMHO

Good to know not to buy IBM, sorry you had to be the bearer of the news

[socalgal]

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks....

Update ^: Fixed! Thanks.

[B727BFJ]

Along with everyone else, I've heard lots of bad things about the IBM 75 GXP drives, but I, personally, Have never heard anything about their 60 GXP's. If anyone has, please let me know, I was considering buying one but I'm starting to get very wary about IBM in the last few minutes!!

Thanks, Jamie

[hirschY]

I just had a bad laptop, T21, at work.
Called IBM, and they told me its definately a software problem???

At that point, I backup up everything and fdisked.
From then on it was dead!
Nothing would install, not even DOS.
Finally ran the ssssllllooooowwwwww memory test, and it failed!
Darn thing tested fine six times under normal test.
But, at least they replaced the memory.
I hate when the hardware guys blame us software people

oh, and I know, personally, about Italian women

[socalgal]

Well, I'm hearing from a friend of mine that he suspects, from his personal experience and others he knows, that the IBMs made in the Phillippines are ones that have high failure rates.

I didn't check to see where my two bad ones were from.. perhaps it could be found from the SN or PN? I could check when I'm done reinstalling the 25G or so of apps & data I have left to install...

It would be interesting to know if mine were made in the Phillippines.. or anyone elses that went bad.

lol, hirschY, and I would say by the you either think we're cool, or perhaps you're just staying cool

[Inanis]

Personally, I am using 2 IBM 60GXP 40GB's in a RAID 0 and they SCREAM! . . .

My previous 30GB HDD had be shipped back. It was only 6 months old. It was a Western Digital. It had fatal sector errors, just like the many other WD HDs from 6GB to 40GB our company has had to RMA recently. ( even after a "write to zeroes" )

The company I work for has switched from Western Digitals and Maxtors to IBMs and Seagates, because we have had to RMA around 25% of those drives.

Have not RMA'd a single IBM or Seagate yet . . .

:o)

[charmler]

Hi Socalgal,
I totally agree with you that Italian women rule as I have been with one for 14 years and she wears the pants as long as she is home. Otherwise I rule the roost And my dog.
I only use IBM SCSI drives and Maxtor IDE because the Maxtor drives are only getting better and SCSI IBM drives are nearly bulletproof. We have very few drive failures even though the term "hot swappable" apparently means that anybody can yank a drive anytime, even with the light on. I wish IBM's return policy was as good as Maxtor's.

[voogru]

I been in the same boat. IBM SUCKS!

[club_med]

You have my sympathies Socalgal,

A friend of mine had two 45g IBM HDD's, both failed about 3-4 months after purchase. He lost about 20gb of data because of this.

Believe it or not he is sticking to IBM, he asked whether he could get a free upgrade.

Im using WD 45gb, no problems.

[otheos]

Rumor not rumor, after having seen 16 75GXPs dying (two of them mine), I keep away from IBM IDE drives and advise everyone I know to do the same. What is worse is that both my RMA's took 6 weeks. So enough of that.

The most amazing is that out of the remaining 14 drives that I saw failing 6 were on the same RAID5 box!! and failed within 3 days of each other (talking about compromising data! you spend $10K on a RAID5 box with 8 drives to see the 6 failing!).

I recommend Maxtor these days. Performance difference only evident in the benchmarks anyway. They X-RMA next day (I had an Atlas V failing on me) and their PR sounds good.

I have to say good words about Fujitsu too. X-RMA next day too, but unfortunatelly their latest IDE drive will be their last IDE drive as they leave the market to focus on SCSI (which they do excellent drives BTW).

Hope you din't lose too much data on this one...

[linux_guru]

Bummer, socal.

I've had great success with Maxtor and Seagate. I have several of both and neither has failed me yet. Also have a 9.1 Gb IBM ultra SCSI. Runs like a dream.... 2 years old & still kicking.

[club_med]

Actually if I remember correctly I have an old no name brand HDD, something like 6-7 years old, 2gb, still running with no problems.

The only problems is its loud.