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Ok I'm cr*pping my pants. I've just read the reports about the problems concerning IBM GXP60 and GXp75 HDs. Does anyone one know if these problems apply to the 180GXP series??
My worries are two fold because I've just bought a 120Gb 180GXP and, have an old 20Gb GXP60 or GXP75 (can't remember which) as a spare/back-up drive!!!

I have not heard of any issues with the GXP180 series.

I think the problem with the GXP75 series is at least partially heat related. Keep the drives cool (ventilated drive bay), and I think you will reduce your chances of having problems.

BurntFingers wrote:

Ok I'm cr*pping my pants. I've just read the reports about the problems concerning IBM GXP60 and GXp75 HDs. Does anyone one know if these problems apply to the 180GXP series??
My worries are two fold because I've just bought a 120Gb 180GXP and, have an old 20Gb GXP60 or GXP75 (can't remember which) as a spare/back-up drive!!!

Most of the issues with the 75GXP and 60GXP are with the multiple platter drives IIRC. I have a 20 gig 75GXP that's been running 24/7 for 3+ years. I wouldn't worry about the 20 & 30 gig drives. A lot of the issues where on larger drives ( although the 30 gig is a 2 platter drive IIRC ).

Thanks for info guys. Takes a little weight off my mind. Would be a complete nightmare to see a brand new 120Gb drive just die!

RANT WARNING

Pffftttt, dont let me start, it was mostly the 75gxp model that had problems, and the 45GB model at that, i have several from early batches that runs great, cooled of course. But mostly it was batches from one of the two factories they used, and the 60gxp model wasnt immersed with the same problems, although they had other problems, a lot less, but as they also was ibm, people automagically implicated them in the 75gxp problem and made it a great deal bigger then it was, hen of a feather.

But accourding to most people that all thought IBM was the perfect company that could never ever have a bad product, it seemed the world was going down in flames because their drive died, especially as IBM seemed to have been placed in the folder for unfailable things. And on top of that, the 75gxp was sold in great quantities, moreso because it was probably the best drive of its time. And unfortunately the first real bad apple IBM had, which seemed to upset people a great deal and made them swore to never buy ibm again

Still, i dont think it was ever near as bad as the bad seagate models, or the bad WD caviar models. I remember some batches of those where 3-4 of 10 drives were bad, but that was before WD had ever established themselves as any other then superbudget, and seagate didnt really take the IDE market seriously. IBM's problem wasnt the fact they had som drives go bad, but the amount of drives, in percent it wasnt nearly as bad as the worst seagate and caviar, but in terms of amount of drives... OUCH, because they had sold a great deal of them after half the world gave it perfect reviews.

END RANT

Aphasia, you may have a point... perhaps IBM was being held to a higher standard, simply because they invented the technology used in modern hard drives, and people trusted them. But their subsequent handling of the situation apparently left a bad taste in people's mouths as well.

My GXP drive ran OK until I accidentally dropped it while moving it from one system to another; and IBM can hardly be blamed for that! My main complaint about it (prior to dropping it) was that it was simply too damn loud -- the whine of the spindle motor drove me nuts! Second loudest hard drive I've ever owned (loudest was an early Seagate 10K RPM SCSI model from a few years back). Maybe dropping it was actually due to a subconscious urge to kill the damn thing so I wouldn't have to listen to it any more...

One of my clients had a server farm that lost many GXP drives, one really warm week when the AC couldn't quite keep up and the server room got a little warm. That is why I am convinced that the problem is at least partially heat related. They replaced all of the failed IBM drives with Maxtors, and moved all of the remaining IBM drives to ventilated drive bays, and haven't had any significant problems since.

Aphasia, you may have a point...

I usually do

And i agree, i have a 5 IBM disks, or was it 6, and some at othercomps i built, all work fine, although i have most of them sitting either cooled or with enough room for them to shed some heat.

Droppings drives is bad, dropping drives in use are worse. I have an old 7200 rpm half height seagate barracude, you can hear the whine from miles away.

Droppings drives is bad, dropping drives in use are worse.

Yes, after dropping it, it would not even spin up properly. Fortunately, there wasn't any critical data on it at the time.

I think the problem with these drives are not heat related at all , but the media building process, the (DISC). They are all doomed. I have followed
all the reports from over a year ago and decided against the 70gig drive and opted for the 60 because it had a more favorable track record. Now a year later it goes right beside the 70GXP. If you look at the scan graph
of my hard drive it is almost linear, starts down where the operating system is writing and ends at the end of the drive. Heat would deteriorate
the circuitry for sure, but the problems are not with motors not spinning or
parking of the heads, it is a loss of the disc media and it's ability to receive
or store new infomation. It's just bad manufacturing techniques and that's
it in a nut shell. I'm going with a cheap stuff and smaller disc until something better shows up.
Just my thoughts.
Tom