IBM DeskStar 75GXP Hard Drive Failures?

Sean Kelly asks: "Like a lot of other people, I went out and bought myself a nice 60GB IBM DeskStar 75GXP (ATA100, 7200rpm) hard drive to put in my sparkling new computer. Boy was that a mistake! A few months after I got the drive, it failed with horrific grinding and clicking noises, plus random data loss. So I RMA'd the first one and got a 'SERVICEABLE USED PART' replacement from IBM, which died of the same death after another few months. Not getting the hint, I RMA'd that one. Last week, I got the refab. drive back from IBM and it has already died, in less than a week! This time I did some site searching and found many people are having problems with this drive. Sites such as The Inquirer, Hexus, Tech Report, Hardware One, Sysopt, and even this PCWorld have dedicated articles, forums and user reviews to these failing and defective drives. From what I can understand, IBM is not publicly acknowledging that they screwed up here. How many other people out there have had their 75GXP (or 60GXP) drives fail? What size were they? What part number? What did IBM do about it? It is my opinion that IBM should do something about this, since I've seen an unnaturally high number of complaints about this drive now that I started looking for customer feedback. Also, here is a letter I sent to IBM explaining my frustration with them. It has more information in it."

Re:No problems here

I have a feeling that part of the problem is environment related- maybe the 75GXP doesn't handle heat or weak power supplies, or vibrations, or something.

That's one theory that's been put forth in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage [news], especially given how some people like to cheap out on power supplies and such in order to get a faster processor, faster/bigger hard drive, or whatever. If you're trying to run a 75GXP in one of those el-cheapo PC Chips barebones systems, you're asking for trouble. (Hell, if you're running anything that involves components from PC Chips, you're asking for trouble.) Some of the people reporting problems have mentioned having various cheap-ass components in their systems, especially power supplies that don't regulate worth a damn. (What good is a 450W power supply if +5V can sag by half-a-volt or more under full load?)

FWIW, I upgraded my main system earlier this year...replaced a 5.1GB Western Digital with a 45GB 75GXP. Since the processor also got upgraded from a 450-MHz K6-III to a 1.0-GHz Athlon (and an appropriate motherboard and memory), the power supply got beefed up from a 250W Deer to a 330W Enermax (with dual fans and the 4-pin P4 power connector, though that sits unused). I've not had even a hint of trouble from the drive (other than run out of space :-)...added a 100GB Western Digital alongside it to fix that).

Initially a problem, but not anymore

I had purchased one from a wholesaler that sells to small-time vendors, and it was an OEM model. It died within a week. I took it back, got another, and this one's been happily running for about ten months.

I've got to wonder if the problem isn't the drives necessarily, but bad handling... Mine were both OEM, only a static bag, no padding otherwise when I received them, so I'm wondering if shipping is doing something nasty to the drives, or if some other problem NOT related to the manufacturing is the cause. Granted, I could be dead wrong, but the second drive, (45GB models) has been absolutely perfect.

I just hope now that my drive-karma holds :)

"the problem isn't the drives, but bad handling"

"I've got to wonder if the problem isn't the drives necessarily, but bad handling..."

Bad handling is DEFINITELY an issue. Many people buy OEM bare drives that come from the manufacturer in bulk packaging. The people who package them and send them to you obviously have no computer knowledge, or thay wouldn't be working in a shipping department. (Computer knowledge means never having to say "Paper or plastic?")

Studies have been done of the acceleration (deceleration) caused by hitting a drive on a hard counter. A small bump of a metal drive on a hard counter can be 70 Gs. When you think about it, it makes sense. The drive is traveling at perhaps 1 foot per second, and then it comes to a complete stop in less than a thousandth of an inch.

The solution is to buy retail-boxed drives. Wait for a sale if the price is a problem.

The damage done by a bump is usually not evident for months until the drive fails. Apparently a drive will get a small mechanical irregularity, and then slowly chew on itself until failure.

By far the most common cause of drive failure is vibration or movement of the case while the drive is running. If you put a tower case on the floor, and the floor moves a little every time someone walks near, expect problems. If you put a case on a concrete floor, but it is often knocked during the day, expect failure. If a computer is on a table that moves a little while you are working, it may not last long. This failure mode is dependent on how much movement about the axis actually happens, of course.

Drives are built to handle a lot of Gs when they are not powered, but when they are running they are very vulnerable.

Inadequate power is also a reason for drive failure. Put a drive on its own power supply connector.

I've had good luck with considerable quantities of Western Digital drives. Good support, also. I've had bad luck with Quantum, Seagate, and Maxtor.

Whew! I didn't realize I knew much about this until I started typing.


Secrecy destroys democracy: What should be the Response to Violence? [hevanet.com]

Mine are pretty good

I've been running a pair as RAID-0 (yeah, I know...) for a couple of months, haven't had any major problems. The drives seem to seek to the inner track and back more often than my Seagate drive, but it's rarely a problem.

I've had problems with other drives before because of a power supply which was slightly too low voltage -- it seems a few drives are overly sensitive to minor voltage drops.

I am sorry to hear about your data loss, but...

Unfortunately, because of your manufacturing faults and inability to admit fault, I have lost a large amount of unique and important data, ranging from schoolwork to business-related documents.

May I humbly suggest that if these data are indeed of such importance, that 4 mm DAT, CD-RW, Zip disks, or even the lowly 1.44 MB floppy are suitable backup media?

Fulminating about lost data due to the failure of a mechanical storage system, and vague threats of class-action lawsuits, are in my experience goods ways to get large manufacturing organizations to put your letter in the deep freeze for about 10 years.

sPh

Re:I am sorry to hear about your data loss, but...

Yes, *click* I can *click* strongly *click* *click* recommend using *click* a Zip *click* drive to *click* back up your *click* work...

Re:I am sorry to hear about your data loss, but...

I can't wait until someone tries to back up their 75GB drive on 1.44MB floppies. By my estimation that's only 53,333 floppies. Given how slow floppy drive transfers are (150kB/sec), your floppies would degrade before you finished your inital backup.

I also can't wait to pay more for the DAT drive than I'd pay just to buy another harddrive and mirror it.
Zip drives are only a minor step up from floppies, and you'd end up spending $7500 on the zip disks alone! BTW, the Click-of-death is widly overblown IMHO. Unless you happened to get one of those defective drives or you play rugby with your zip drive the media isn't going to fail any faster than a floppy (although that's not exactly a ringing endorsement)
At least CD-R (or even CR-RW) is fairly viable, if a little harder to automate (you can't just tar the files to a device).

Re:I am sorry to hear about your data loss, but...

the computer labs bought about 100 machines all with Zip drives installed, and one by one they all gave the "click" and died. all further disks inserted into the drive would be munged. eventually, someone figured out that something mechanical would break inside the drive if you inserted a standard 3 inch floppy into the drive. Thus why, one by one, they all almost died, because the students would come in and screw em up....

Can you fit a 3 1/2" into a ZIP drive?

Another cause, and perhaps as likely in this particular case (it's pretty obvious pretty quick if you're using the wrong drive) is that some ZIP drives, when they fail, will chew the edges of the ZIP disk. If you try to use that disk in another ZIP drive, it will destroy the head. Add in a desperate user aiming to get data back, rinse and repeat. See some details over at Steve Gibson's grc.com.

Maxtor

I've had a lot of luck with Maxtor's newer model drives. I have several of their 80-gig HDs, and none has crapped out on me yet. And the price is right; Maxtor 80 giggers can be had at CompUSA for $200.

Another victim of the "Deathstar"...

Count me among those hit by it. I bought a 30GB Deskstar 75GXP (model DTLA-307030) a little over a year ago. It worked perfectly fine until about a month ago, when accessing a certain location on the disk would result in grinding noises, and then the computer locking up completely. The drive failed IBM's drive fitness test, so I RMA'd it. I got a 30GB Deskstar 60GXP (model IC35L030AVER07, which btw is an OEM-only model, since the 60GXP line is 20GB/platter).

I guess they decided there were enough problems with the 75GXP line that they sent me a 60GXP. I haven't heard of any problems with the 60GXP line, and to boot it's much quieter than my old 75GXP -- I can't even hear it seek unless I listen very closely.

Try StorageReview.com for more information

Take a look at the discussion forums over at StorageReview.com [storagereview.com]. There have been several discussions about the 75GXP (and 60GXP) over there.

Case in point, some of their readers are currently running an unofficial survey [storagereview.com].

Hit SR's search for more info

I have mod points. I'd rather post...

I'm a fixture over on storagereview.com (you can type it in, I'm not a goatse.cx person). User complaints about the GXP-series have been a literally unceasing topic of discussion since very early this year. The 75gxp is now an assumed unreliable drive - to the point that a single thread about ongoing good experiences with them only garnered a half-dozen replies (one of them mine. I have two 75GB 75gxps that continue to function in a RAID0 array).

I believe SR is now being /.-ed. I can't seem to access it with my crappy modem connection, but few weeks ago, someone typed "75gxp" and "fail" in the search page and got 1500 results. There have also been polls conducted about the GXP's behavior, and there is some evidence suggesting that the more recent 60GXP is just as bad, both in the tech support and General forums. This is a direct contradiction to several posts here stating that the 60GXP has no problem. Other interesting topics, for those willing to visit SR's forums and poke around, include the possibility of class-action litigation (including posts by a soon-to-be-lawyer), statisical analysis of similarities in failed drives - location of manufacture, size, that sort of thing, and many, many tales of RMA woe similar to those of the topic originator.

The 75GXP has been discontinued. If you send in your failed 75GXP today, in all likelihood, you'll get a 60GXP back. 75GB 75GXPs don't have an equivalent size in the newer 60GXP product line. I have no idea what IBM does for those - they were significantly more expensive.

Finally, IBM's DFT utility [ibm.com] for Windows and Linux, if you'd like to test out your own 60- or 75GXP. From time to time it is able to correct misbehaving drives' problems, but just as often, if you're to the point of needing to use it, you might as well call in your RMA.

Heat

How's the ventilation in your computer case? Is it possible your drives are overheating?

Certain lots apparently very bad

The rumour going around the people who work on the disk subsystem in Linux is that certain lots/fabrication plats have lots of problems, and others are A-OK.

I recently got to experience the latter, when I got a machine with six of these disks as a RAID. To date, FIVE of the disks have had to be replaced, thanks God that did not include the system disk...

Is It Manufactured In Hungary?

General concensus in messages boards seems to be that IBM hard drives manufactured in Hungary seem to fail at a greater rate than from other factories.

I myself have had a failed IBM hard drive. It was defective upon shipping, and had it replaced immediately with an advance RMA. The replacement failed on me about a month later, and I didn't qualify for an advance RMA because I already RMA'ed it once (even though the first one didn't techically fail on me, it was DOA). This was a 10GB Deskstar 14GXP (I think).

So during the excruciating one-month replacement, I bought a Maxtor drive, and now use it as my primary drive (I'm not trusting my third IBM replacement). The Maxtor's a faster drive anyway, so I'm not complaining. I'll just stay clear of IBMs for a while.

Drives too fast for the electronics?

There was some rumbling on Storage Review [storagereview.com] that these drives may just be too fast for their electronics, and once you start filling up the outer sectors on the disk you will start getting errors. My friend has a pair of the 45GB 75XPs, and at least one of them has "issues". Every so often (now that the drive is full) the kernel will spit out:
ad4s1g: hard error reading fsbn 76293856 of 26874736-26874751 (ad4s1 bn 76293856; cn 8073 tn 63 sn 37)
followed by:
ad4: DMA problem fallback to PIO mode

So far the 60GXPs that I use have had no problems (knock on wood). I've seen at least once source that suggests that the 45GB versions of this drive are the most suseptable to having this problem. I suspect there was some poor quality control on these drives and some very marginal hardware was released onto the world (bad IBM, bad!), but that's more of a feeling since I don't have much evidence to support the claim.

Vibrating drives good for relaxation...

I strapped mine to the back of my favorite E-Z-Chair. I run a program that alternately seeks the innermost then outermost cylinders. Now the chair hums like a power-sander; It puts me right to sleep!

I still have some unique and important data on it (the drive, not the chair), so I am concerned that this unorthodox use of the drive may lead to problems. I may even start doing backups.

My 20gig deskstar is fine

I love the IBM hard drives. IBM may make expensive hardware but they are always fine quality. I can't even tell that its on because its so quiet and its been working for over a year without a problem. I guess the newer ones are the ones that are defective. Also be aware that Maxtor uses %100 IBM desktar drives. They just slap a Maxtor label on them.

9/18/36GB 10Krpm drive recall

At the place I work, we had a few 18GB IBM drives fail on us. They were standard inclusions with the Sun gear we use here (Sun ships a lot of machines with IBM and Seagate drives.) We found out from IBM that there was a recall on 9, 18 and 36 GB, 10,000 RPM drives manufactured between certain dates. These drives are pretty much guaranteed to fail, period. One of our other departments had over 90% of their suspect drives fail already. Our Sun reps came out to count how many we had, so that they could replace them. My department has well over 100 of the recalled drives. Fortunately, most of them are in gear that hasn't been put into production yet.

I have about 10 of these drives, and had 1 problem

When the drived first came out, I purchased a 15G GXP and it did fail a few months later (my first drive failure ever). IBM quickly responded and shipped me a new drive which has had no problems since (more than 1 year).

I use 5 75G drives (purchased in July) in a RAID5 array, and they are all running beautifully.

I use 2 60G drives in a RAID1 array (purchased in August), and both of those are fine as well.

My Windows Box (shutup!) box uses a 45G GXP (purchased in January) and it's running beautifully.

My Linux Box (ok, cheer now) uses a 45G GXP (purchased in March) also, and has no problems ('cept it gets hot, and the 1.33G Athlon fries my bacon).

So in short, when the drives first came out, it appears there were problems (and in fact PCWorld mentioned a plant in Hungary that produced faulty parts). In recent months, however, there do not appear (in my limited experience) to be of poor quality.

In fact, I would say they are exceptionally fast and quiet. I recommend them to friends (I recommend Quantum to my enemies!). And I don't have anything to do with BigBlue.

But more importantly, DRIVES FAIL! If you don't have a backup then you're none too bright. If you do have a backup, don't worry about it. IBM has a 3 year warranty on these suckers!

How unfortunate.

It's irritating that IBM produced a lemon, but it's even more disappointing that they've been unresponsive to their customers. Customer service makes a world of difference, especially with commodity items like hard drives. They say that a happy customer tells five people about their experience while an unhappy customer tells twenty-five. Well, thanks to Slashdot, an unhappy customer has told thousands of potential customers to stay away from this drive. A little more responsiveness to this customer's problem would have prevented that.

In contrast, a good experience can make a loyal customer. I recently purchased a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV because of its' speed and silence. When I finally installed the drive, it started making a really irritating squealing sound. I contacted Seagate, and they quickly wrote back a helpful e-mail along with some software to fix the problem. Not only did they make me a happy customer, but they prevented me from becoming an unhappy customer and bitching to all of my friends about it. IBM would do well to take note.

Re:How unfortunate.

Companies are like giant stellar masses. When they get too big, they collapse into a superdense structure from which no customer service can escape.

The exact threshold for this can probably be determined mathematically. IBM has clearly exceeded it. ATT certainly has... even their broadband sales people are clueless about the services they are offering.

These days, I expect aggravation, not satisfaction, from any big company. More and more of them are proving unable to answer even the simplest questions. Companies that surprise me with good service (most recently, Speakeasy) quickly earn my loyalty.

As a side rant, the bigger a company is the worse their web sites get. The biggest, most expensive sites seem to be utterly useless for anything but driving you mad, with irrelevant search results and incomplete specifications. (ATT@Home comes to mind again.)

I look forward to the day when my small company has grown up, and we can just exist without needing to really care about the quality of what we are doing. It must be a wonderful position to be in. ;)

You're doing a couple things wrong.

Nice letter. Who'd you send it to? Was it to the VP of Consumer Affairs? No? Didn't think so. That's generally where you go with escalation letters.

If I was working at IBM, I wouldn't be too concerned about your letter. You talk, but not very well. As long as you have your Swingline stapler, you're not dangerous.

You make slight, inoffensive, and -- most importantly -- ineffective threats. The world doesn't work like that. Your state has lemon laws? Exercise them! Contact your State Attorney General's office and get information or even get them working for you. Attach a copy of your correspondence with the AG.

"It seems to me that this is a scenario where a class action lawsuit..." -- I'm hearing an Andrew Dice Clay bit starting here. Put up or shut up. You think you have a legitimate case? Get your Lawyer to write to IBM. Can't afford a lawyer? You're a student. Your college has a legal aid department. Your school may even have a law department, and new lawyer grads are always looking for a way to make a name and would jump all over the chance to have this as their first big case.

No. You're an apologist, non-confrontational, don't-want-to-make-anyone-mad-here, whining loser who'll get walked all over. Don't sit there threatening to run off to Maxtor, SEND A FUCKING COPY OF YOUR MAXTOR DRIVE RECEIPT!

"Somehow right the wrongs?" Your mother still lays out your clothes each night, huh?

Some people are going to be mad at my tone. Fuck 'em. Either do things right or don't bother.

There's enough info on how to deal with big companies out there and here you are whining with an Ask Slashdot, when the story shoulda simply been "BadAss writes: The entire line of IBM 75GXP drives are defective. Avoid at all costs. I had a couple and here's how I dealt with IBM. If you have one, back up your data now and get your drive replaced."

woof.

If a mirrored drive dies in a Compaq DL360, the good drive continues the mirroring and dies as well. I know this now.

Re:You're doing a couple things wrong.

I used to work in support.

Every support tech, customer service rep, and manager in any company you deal with will delay your service if you try to be Mr. Tough Guy.

The motto always was: "We'll help you if you help us."

Trying to act like you are king shit does absolutely nothing to further your cause. It just makes you look like an asshole...

Just talk to a support tech and say "Look, I've had this drive replaced three times. I'd like something done about it." And usually they'll do something to help you, because some of them do give a shit...