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IBM 120GXP Revisited
Andrew sent us a link to an article about the
IBM 120gxp controversy.
This is about the fact that the drive has been declared unfit for server use,
and to back that up, IBM says you should only use it for 333 hours a month.
This is a good summary of the issues and worth a read.
pair.net replaced all server drives that were IBM with Maxtor:/ driveswap s.html
http://www.pair.com/pair/support/notices
I've been buying Maxtor since, and haven't had a single problem.
This sig is self referential.
I think part of the trouble here is that IBM is selling these drives as OEM parts, and not retail drives. OEMs generally don't sell systems to the enthusiast market (The group most likely to leave systems running all day). In your average Dell/Compaq/Cow computer, it's preset to go on standby after an hour or so, powering off the drive. Since all of us "power users" don't like those performance-detracting ACPI/APM functions, we always disable them.
Furthermore, the DeskStar isn't intended to be a server part - IBM makes the UltraStar for that.
So, in essence, it's buyer-beware with OEM parts. Just like with the ATI video card debacle - You're buying parts that aren't intended for *you* to use. It's your fault if you're tryin' to skimp a couple of bucks out of IBM/ATI/whoever by buying on the grey market.
Now, that said...it's pretty fscking ridiculous to be making these drives and all but marketing them as the fastest ATA drives on the planet. That's practically hyping it up to the enthusiast market right there. And I really think it's asinine to expect these drives to *only* be run 8 hours a day. Factoring in the average lunch break when the computer will most likely get left on, that means that the drives are generally running out of spec on a regular business day in your average workstation.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Beware of the Leopard.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If they aren't good for the server market, the 120GXP aren't good for anything- since what regular home user ever needs that much space?
Oh, and BTW, the article also mentions problems with the 75X and 40X drives.
Conclusion- Somebody at IBM QA has screwed up- vote with your $$, folks, and make IBM take notice of this problem- we should not have to replace a HD after only 1 year (or less!) of use!
Take a look at this.
Scary.
I bought a computer with a 75GXP in it last may, by Thanksgiving, the read/write heads had started making sounds as though it were thrashing, looking for a landing zone. By the time I was able to call the manufacturer of my computer (Christmas time), the computer had completely failed to boot.
Hopefully, the replacement they sent will last more than 6 months. But, just in case, I have a Maxtor 60GB in place as a backup. At least this time, if it goes down, I won't have to wait for the replacement.
Randal Graves says: I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class... Especially since I rule.
What bothers me most about IBM drives is they get more and more noisy through time. When I bought their 40GB 5400rpm model I was pleased by its quiet operation. After six months I noticed the drive is somewhat noisy and later the noise became unbearable for me. The same happened to a 20GB. Can anyone confirm these problems? What about their newer drives?
Why is there a fuss over these drives being unsuitable for servers? Were these drives marketed to the server market? I think I'm out of the loop on this one.. can anyone fill me in on the full story? I was a little confused after reading the article.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Geeez... Firestones where good untill a few models a few years ago, now they only sell Bridgestone :)
:)
Wouldnt be suprised if IBM starts selling BMI drives
I have a light-duty server that has been running two 60GXP drives for the past 6 months with no trouble. After I heard about the problems with the 75GXP I switched from striping to mirroring in my raid configuration just to be safe.
When I heard about the 120GXP I figured that IBM was releasing the modified (glass plattered) version of the Deskstar drive in order to clear up any perception that the line had problems (due to the issues with the 75GXP). I decided to buy one to put in the new Athlon XP box I was building at the time. I've been using it for 2 months with no trouble (so far), but since I purchased it from a retailer I found on pricewatch, I doubt that I could follow the article's suggestion and return it. The performance benchmarks I've done suggest that the drive performs relatively well (135% of the 7200 RPM ATA100 reference drive in SiSoft Sandra's HD benchmark).
I probably won't buy another IBM drive for a while, however, based on the unresponsiveness of IBM to the problems as reported in the article.
Amazing magic tricks
I have seen these stories about the IDE drives and have heard people saying that IBM isn't doing well with IBM drives, but I have expereinced that QA in general with IBM is crap. The other day we received a system direct from IBM, a rackmount server. The thing shipped with no hard drive. Additionally, an upgrade we ordered pre-installed came in a separate box. When calling to get the order fixed, the order number on the box was not listed in their database. Eventually they said the order number on the box was only a 'partial' order number, and the hard drive was shipped.
Three of the four CDs they shipped were cracked beyond usability, packing was horrible. IBM needs to get QA better before I'll considr them again for purchases.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Seriously, though, online polls are completely meaningless. They are swayed by rigging and mass canvasing, and that's ignoring the basic tenent that only the motivated (or bored) bother voting in the first place.
Having said that, I find this whole debate intriguing. Firstly there is the fact that the 75GXP was a very big seller (performance and value packed into one), so the industry standard failure rates indicate that with normal failure rates there will still be more people with failed drives. Anecdotally I can say that myself, and several other people I know, have had zero problems with our 75GXP, but following standard Slashdot-esque thought processes I should extrapolate that out and say that therefore no one has every had a problem, and therefore the drive is perfect. I have heard stories about people who had to "replace it X times!", but in almost all cases you'll find that they grossly inproperly installed the drive with no venting space on both sides (and this is a case with drives from any manufacturer. I had a Maxtor die and opened the case to find that the OEM had sandwiched it between two other drives).
I saw an interview with one of the plaintiffs against IBM, and I'd swear I saw them subtly shift gears from saying that the 75GXP had a higher failure rate (I would guess that that they can't find numbers to back that up, and no numbers determined by a Slashdot polling are not sufficient to convince anyone but the converted), to saying that instead this is a lawsuit expressing outrage about any failures, and it is really a bellwether against all hard drive makers. Uh huh. Now there's this article that is basically thrown off by standard marketing and reliability metrics: The drive IS made for desktop use, and desktop use is normally about 8 hours a day of infrequent use, versus 100% usage 24 hours a day for some server drives. Perhaps they simply realize that the latter will naturally have a higher failure rate so they built that into the server drive prices, but they don't guarantee that for desktops? The article makes the contention that it is a usage heat issue, but that seems a bit silly as the drive will reach maximum temperature minutes after going to 100% usage (i.e. It's not still creeping upwards after 8 hours).
Also, these drives do show up in retail... I saw them at Fry's last week and I think CompUSA has them too.
I'm going to get my hands on two dead but RMA'able 75GXPs...the 45gig models, for the cost of shipping them to my house. Both are replaceable under IBM's warrenty, I don't exactly trust it though...
I'm probably going to run them in RAID 1 (Mirroring?) I think off of my KT7-RAID. That way....well...They'll both fail, just hopefully not at the same time.
I have used WD drives for about 5 years now and their higher-end EIDE and SCSI have been great workhorses for us.
A shame for IBM. Their hardware used to be top-notch in quality. Period. I guess that leaves HP....
I'm finding this story rather spooky as my 75GXP failed on me (ironically in the middle of my first real backup) yesterday after 18 months of "average" use (less than 6 hours a day). I use the IBM drive as my main system drive, and keep a 5GB for data backups "now and again".
I bought the drive way back in October 2000 with the confidence that "it's an IBM drive: these things are not only fast, but are meant to be reliable". When I started to see the horror stories of other peoples' drives failing I felt quite lucky (read: smug) that mine was still going strong. Now I realise how stupid I look: that whiz, whir, crunch, grind noise that I heard yesterday from the disk *above* the sound of my rather noisy fans scared the life out of me.
I'm now faced with the nasty task of not only attempting to salvage what data I can before I send it to IBM (yes, as other people have mentioned, at least IBM provide a fairly decent 3 year warranty), but also shudder in anticipation at what IBM decide to do with my drive. I believe there are 3 options:
1. Attempt to "fix" my drive and send it back (although having the "Drive Fitness Test" return "Defective Disk" should quash this option). That means I'm stuck with the same drive which is most likely to fail on me again sometime in the (not-too-distant) future.
2. Replace my drive with the same spec, from the same product line & production factory. Again, this worries me as I'm probably ending up with a new disk which has the same defects and thus is also going to die on me.
3. Replace my drive with a newer product with an equivalent spec. Yesterday I was hoping for this option. However, having read the ViaHardware article, this doesn't hold much hope for me either.
And that's the crux: it's alright having the drive under warranty & returning it, but who's to say that any drive they replace it with is not as faulty?
This whole fiasco with the GXP line has certainly put me off IBM drives, no matter how fast and "great" they may be. Shame.
"Unless you pay your shareware fee this harddrive will stop working after 333 hours."
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
For a while, they were playing fast and loose with the UDMA spec and produced a line of drives that weren't safe for UDMA use- they'd work, but a lot of them would corrupt data if you operated them in UDMA mode.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
from the article:
:)
While large numbers of readers responded to the questions I posed regarding drive reliability, their emails present very different pictures. Some of you swear by IBM drives and their reliability, while listing many of the Seagate, Maxtor, or WD drives you've seen fail in both a corporate and a consumer setting, while other readers had horror stories of seeing IBM drive after IBM drive bite the dust.
On the general topic of hard drive reliability, I've noticed a similar trend -- every sysadmin to whom I speak seems to have a poorly-founded personal hatred for one hard drive manufacturer. Sure, I admit, having a hard drive fail on you really sucks (esp. if you've been lazy with backups and don't have RAID).
What's weird about this is that people who are otherwise rational will take a single experience with a bad drive and use it to justify an opinion that all drives from that manufacturer are unreliable. It reminds me of D&D players who will, after rolling a d20 four or five times, decide that it "rolls high."
Here's the deal: hard drives fail. Get over it and design your systems such that your important data isn't relying on a single hard drive. In fact, two of my hard drives (a Quantum and an IBM) are slowly failing on me right now. Before that, the last one was a Seagate.
Now, I will admit that there must be some models from some manufacturers which are more prone to failure, just as there are probably some d20s which are prone to "roll high." Perhaps some manufacturers tend to make more reliable drives than others. However, in all the times I have heard someone bitch about a hard drive manufacturer, not once has someone referred to a study that did a statistically sound comparison of drives (I'm not sure that one even exists that compares, over time, all the various models of the manufacturers). It's always "Seagate sucks! A Seagate drive failed on me once, and I had to do a bare-metal recovery."
Of course, in this case, lots of people have reported problems with this drive, so it's a little different. If, sometime in the near future, someone tells me not to buy a cheap-ass OEM IBM IDE drive to use in a critical server, saying "remember the 120GXP?", I'll probably listen to them. However, based on my limited anecdotal evidence, I doubt that will happen
</rant>
Bad idea: Letting your drive melt.
I had problems with my 40GB Quantum AS (bad sectors, spinning down and refusing to speak to anything); I noticed it was getting rather hot (bare in mind this is in a well ventilated case at the bottom of the 3.5" mounting bays with plenty of space above it) and wondered if this had anything to do with it.
So I mounted a card cooler I had spare, put it on top of a small speaker just outside the case (I leave the side open) and had it blow over the system.
The result? CPU temp dropped a good 6c (43c fully loaded for a 1GHz Athlon clocked to 1.2GHz, compared with ~50 before) and now both my drives (Quantum Fireball 20GB and Quantum Fireball AS 40GB) are cool to the touch. There's been absolutely no sign of any problems with the drive since either.
IBM is claiming in some places its unsuited for server use because a restriction of 333 hours per month of use.
But I haven't turned my PC off in over a year (does anyone do that anymore?). Does that make it a server, or simply just a normal use?
Seriously, for those of you with broadband, don't you keep your PC on all the time? Why would you shut it off?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
How will people use their 1,000 free hours of AOL in 45 days if their hard drive, and hence their PC, can only be on 333 hours per month?
Tip: Check if the drive temperature is not exceeding the specified limits with something like this tool. Many case designs do not provide sufficient ventilation for 7'200 RPM drives, especially if they're mounted closely together. Use a HD cooler if the disks get too warm, it's still less expensive than reconstructing data and/or reinstalling.
Irony: big ad from IBM on my page of the "IBM 120GXP Revisited" article, saying "Time to update your critical systems security!". Yes, indeed 8-)
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
- http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/prod/deskstar.htm
"...delivers Non-stop leadership..."Late last year when it was Quantum Fireball drives that were dropping like flies in our office I got on the phone with a drive repair center in Canada. We were going through the "How much will it cost us to actually retrieve the data from these drives?" discussion and I thought to ask him what brand of drives he sees the *least*.
"SCSI" was his response. "Oh sure," he said "there are fewer of them out there -- but we hardly see any at all."
One of the other interesting things he told me is that the drives included in Quantum's Snap Server appliances, despite being IDE, are *NOT* drives you can buy off the shelf. And he hasn't gotten in a single Snap Server drive in the two years they had been selling them.
I switched from Quantum to IBM drives at the time (ugh!) but had the forsight to put them all in a RAID-1 configuration. We've sent three DeathStars back for repair so far. The good news? IBM had replacements to us in under a week.
I recently switched from IBMs to Maxtor (making sure I wasn't buying Quantum's old stock) and have already had one of their 80Gb drives fail. For the record they are not as responsive as IBM in the RMA department.
So what's the answer folks? You get what you pay for. If you care about your data buy an Adaptec 1200A RAID-1 controller and two drives, or spend the money on a SCSI controller and SCSI drives. So far I haven't found any IDE drive vendors that can sell you a reliable drive (I have dead fujitsu drives around here as well, but must admit that I still haven't tried Western Digital.)
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Yes, we all know IBM's IDE drives are shitty now,
OK, maybe you were just trolling, but with your low UID I will give you a chance.
What drive manufacturer do you think is good then? From random reviews I was starting to think that IBM was one of the better ones. I have purchases several Western Digital ones and have had too many of them fail (for me that is). Therefore, I have been looking for a better HD manufactuer. Who makes the most reliable HDs today?
Until I saw this, I had, for some reason, been under the impression that IBM drives were the most reliable IDE drives around...
Which leads me to wonder... What IDE drives *are* good?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
IBM is giving a classic demonstration in how NOT to handle a problem. It has been demonstrated time and time again that the tactic of denying everything does not work. It doesn't work for politicians, it doesn't work for accounting firms, and it doesn't work for electronics manufacturers.
IBM could have come right out, admitted to a defect and paid the price for that. By admitting to it, and making sure to replace all of those defects, they would have bought themselves a huge amount of credibility. We'd all buy IBM drives knowing full well that if there was ever a design problem we'd hear about it and get it fixed.
Now, IBM is risking the reputation of their entire drive line through these shenanigans. Before IBM stood as one of the best drive manufacturers, but repeated issues with the GXP line are quickly submarining that. In the ultra-competitive hard drive market, this sort of problem could put that unit completely out of business.
I personally owned an IBM 75GXP, and it is the only hard drive I've ever owned that had a problem. I've been using hard drives since a 20MB box attached to my Atari 1040ST, and not a single one of them ever made a fuss. My defective drive has since been replaced, but it's of course with another IBM drive and now I continue to be concerned that maybe this drive will be defective too.
I wonder how long before people learn the lesson that covering your tracks, especially in this era of rapid distribution of information, is a bad policy.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I have not really trusted IBM drives since my DGHS 18 U died. Not because it died, but because IBM Customer Service handled it extremely poorly. Not only was the drive purchased from an authorized IBM agent I had full documentation. They had initially said I needed documentation to replace it, but when I obtained documentation they said the warranty was only a year. The paperwork I had clearly showed otherwise, but they sternly refused. Since, I have acumulated about 14 dead IBM drives in the 10-30 gb range...
Anyway, I think we're all misisng something here. I've seen IBM drives installed in a Raid config die within hours of eachother, just days or weeks out of warranty.
I think the thinking at IBM drives is along this line "Lets manufacture the drive in such a way we can undercut our competition, but as a result, it will make the drive only last this many hours.." The failure rate could be related to the fatigue rate of metal of a certain purity used in the drive, stability of ceramics used, how good the air filter is inside, etc etc. From my experience seeing each class of drives die, The MTBF is amazingly similar between drives that die.
Lets say the warranty on these is 3 year. Isn't that IBM saying that the drive has a lifetime of 11,998 hours, or just about 499.5 days? If I'm right, even if you follow IBM's reccomendation, the drive will die, but more likely to be out of warranty. Will they replace the drive if I don't follow the reccomendation? I would like my drives to last 5 or 10 years.. or until I don't need it anymore. Period. Not a year.. or three years or whatever the warranty du jour is.
The oldest drives I have and am using are Seagate FH 5.25" 9 gb scsi drives. They're 10 years old. Their MTBF is clearly published, and about 800,000 hours, if memory serves.... this is far more acceptable.
Wendell
At least IBM was kind enough to warn you of this on their spec sheets:
60GXP Spec Sheet, Pg 50 of 209
120GXP Spec Sheet, Pg 2 of 2
There's probably one of these for the 75GXP line. But I think it is implied from the get go already, if the clicking doesn't kill you first.
What ever you do, just don't put two of these babies in a TiVo!
I've had very good experince with them. I have a 800 MB drive that still runs well. I don't use it much any more becaues of the size. My drives are exclusivly Maxtor now. (no I do not represent Maxtor or any seller dealing with Maxtor)
I have had a Quantum Drive fail after 1 month so badly that even a data recovery company could not recover any data from it. It had anihilated the 'sync track' by scratching it to death.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
333hr MTBF means that they fail (on average) every 333 hours?
Hm... 333 hours / 24 hours/day ~ 13 days.
So, you've got to replace your drives every two weeks or so? Hahaha.
Please, tell me I'm reading this wrong.
*/me reads article*
Ah, they're just not recommending them for low-end servers anymore. Maybe they want people to buy their SCSI drives for a bit more for those cases. That'd probably be the smart thing to begin with except that, with the proliferation of home networking equipment, more and more people will want to build servers and they will not want or need to spend over $10k on them for their family of 4 to share files.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
I had a Quantum drive fail by 'click death'. They told me the clicking sound was the heads hitting the stops. It started to become worse, and after a month it had died. The data was unrecoverable even by a data recovery company and their clean room.
My advice - Beware!
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Only 8 hours a day? Next thing you know the drives will be demanding 15 minute coffee breaks twice a day, full medical and dental, three weeks vacation each year, job security, and so on.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Few other manufacturers name a series of drives after a single technology/model series like IBM does, and few drives have the gross sales of the 75GXP series (well, I'll admit that that is totally anecdotal :-) It just seemed that everyone I knew bought a 75GXP). However, in the few times that a manufacturer did name a series of drives the same thing I DID hear the same sort of grumblings : I recall them about both the BigFoot and the Fireball.
As stated before, this line of HDD (Deskstar) are *CHEAP* ones.
...
and for hardware (even if it may not be true for software), you get what you paid for !!!
I've go 3 IBMs SCSI drives (UltraStar) ranging from an old 2 Gb 5400 RPMs to a (recent) 18 Gb 10000 RPM and guess what ?
Not a single bad cluster, not a single problem with them.
Oh, yeah they have a 3-year warranty
What is the warranty for an DeskStar ?
#include "coucou.h"
My 7200 rpm 34GXP IBM died after only 12 months of light usage (1-2 hr a day) during a game install. I have heard 34GXPs died a lot in other people's boxes (Apple used to ship them in their G4 - we have some in our office - all have died). I have 2 other disks (RAID1/Fujitsu disks) that run 24/7 with heavy usage (busy server) and they have been OK for 2 yr now. My new 7200rpm WD that replaced the IBM has been fine as well.
Of course this doesn't compare to horror stories of people where all 4 IBM disks in a RAID dies within a month. I think the whole GXP line smells bad.
D.
Anyone building their own system should pay attention to heat problems. I'll bet that you won't see these drives failing in systems built by Dell and others, they have engineers to deal with airflow and heat removal. If you put a fast drive in a case meant for a piddly 5400rpm drive, then you're begging for trouble. All the systems I build and sell with 7200 or greater RPM drives have fans blowing air on and around the drives. Any fast drive is going to fail without direct heat sinking and airflow.
This is a lesson learned from installing a dozen fast track raid cards into servers, with the second drive (and often both) being 7200RPM drives. We had all sorts of failures until we looked at the case airflow.
Obviously, however, the IBM drives are failing at a higher rate than other manufacturers. The reason is probably due to slightly smaller tolerances given for heat problems. The other big problem is selling their drives to the inexperienced consumers - one of the reasons you can find certian drives only in prebuilt systems. The manufacturer knows to sell only to people who know what their doing.
With the hard drive being the slowest component in the system (the bottle neck) people want to get the faster drive, but they fail to think of it in terms of heat production. As much time needs to be spent dealing the the hard drive's heat sinking as with the processor's heat sinking.
-Adam
333 hours per month is only 13 days per month. 45% working time. Working 12-7 or maybe 24-3.5
The problem is companies will change something, Fab, fab mamagment, a new brand of soldies in there boards, and it will have consequence later. Company ABC could have the best IDE drives, ever. The they get some new management in a Fab. The managment changes some small thing(in there eyes) and suddenly, drives start failing after 3 months.
It happens. I've seen management skip on a fab filtration system for a week to get a bigger bonus, only to pay for it later.(these where NOT HD fabs).
All companies go throught this time to time.
there are two things you can do to protect your self:
1)Buy SCSI. there higher quality. Most IDE drives are drives that didn't meet SCSI specs.
2)Don't buy the newest drive. Drives are large enough now, you can live 1 year behind the curve. This way you can evaluate drives based on some history of the specific drive, and not just company rep.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For SCSI? IBM.
For cheap IDE drives that don't fall apart a month after you open the box? Maxtor, oddly enough.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Shopping around at the local computer show and picked up a couple of drives. Lot's to choose from including Maxtor and IBM all lined up side by side. Prices were pretty close, RPM, capacity, etc. etc. but ya' know - I could recall hearing all sorts of CRAP about IBM drives failing of late. Sorry IBM, I chose a pair of 80gig Maxtor drives this time. I don't replace drives very often and seldom have them fail on me but if IBM isn't supporting those that do fail or coming clean about a problem then I'm not supporting THEM either! There are way too many other choices out there and I made mine, hopefully IBM will get it together and come clean but until then I'm not going to trust them. Bummer too - I used to think highly of their drives...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I recall them about both the BigFoot and the Fireball
Hmm. My home server has a Bigfoot and two Fireballs in it, and the drive in my main day-to-day machine is a 75GXP.
No problems yet, but it sounds like I'm not in for the rosiest future.
--saint
I've also had terrible luck with WD. I've had good luck with Maxtor and Fujitsu, although I only have one or two Fujitsu drives recently and they are fairly old (4G range). Most of my recent purchased have been Maxtor, and I suspect will continue to be so unless they start having problems.
I used to be in the clone mfg business. One thing we determined is that companies go through cycles. For instance, WD has at various times been among the best AND the worst of the manufacturers out there. Seagate has made some wonderful drives and some absolute crap.
Here's a resource I've been watching lately. If anyone has similar things (published reports of reliability from places that deal with dead drives) please follow up to this message.
http://www.driveservice.com/bestwrst.htm
Overclocking is causing the drives to fail? I'm sorry, but that seems pretty far out there. I've seen drives fail to respond when PCI timings were WAY out there but fail? Nah, I don't think that's a very likely cause. The drives have got to have their own internal clocks (okay, I know they do - I see the oscillators on the PCB) and should have checks inside to make sure that commands don't send the heads off into lala land. If tey don't have the latter then would you really want to use that drive?
;-)
Heat and power fluctuations sound like much more likely external issues. Either that or there's simply an internal flaw that didn't show up in testing. Wouldn't be the first time that's occured now would it? I still recall the grease problem seagate had years ago where heads would get mired in the stuff. A quick "twist start" would usually free them up but if you shut them down and allowed them to cool it would stick again. I replaced DOZENS of those damned htings doing field service. when I hit up a Seagate rep at a show about it he officially denied the problem - and then proceeded to tell me off-record just how bad it was. I didn't buy a Seagate drive for awhile afterwards
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Here is an email response from IBM. German original followed by Babeled translation:
---
Sehr geehrter Herr Holmes,
Danke für Ihr Interesse in unsere Deskstar 120GXP Festplattenserie.
Die angegebenen 333 monatlich 'empfohlenen Betriebsstunden (POH - Power On
Hours)' in
dem Datenblatt der Deskstar 120GXP sollte nicht als oberste Grenze
angenommen werden.
Es ist lediglich eine Betrachtung des typischen Einsatzes in einer Desktop
Umgebung,
in der die Mehrzahl dieser Festplatten vorwiegend eingesetzt werden.
Das Deskstar 120GXP Model eignet sich für einen 24/7 Betrieb, sollte es
Ihre Applikation erfordern.
Mit freundlichen Gruessen
IBM Technology Group Support Centre
Anja Ruf
email : drive@uk.ibm.com or drive@de.ibm.com
Homepage : http://www.ibm.com/harddrive
---
Translation:
---
Dear Mr. Holmes, Thanks for your interest into our Deskstar 120GXP fixed disk series. The indicated 333 monthly ' recommended operation hours (POH - power on Hours) ' in the data sheet of the Deskstar 120GXP should not be assumed as the highest boundary. It is only a view of the typical application in a Desktop environment, in which the majority of these fixed disks are predominantly used. The Deskstar 120GXP Model is suitable for a 24/7 operation, should require it your application.
Yours sincerely IBM Technology Group support Centre
Anja call email: drive@uk.ibm.com or drive@de.ibm.com Homepage: http://www.ibm.com/harddrive
Are they back-tracking on the previous back-track? (is that possible?)
I currently have 2 x 60GXP and 2 x 120GXP in my machine (40G each) running 24/7. Max temp as reported by IBM's fitness tool was 34deg/C. Strange clicking noises do happen from the drives, we'll wait and see how long it takes...
As I sent over to Kyle at [H]ardOCP a week or so ago....
d el=WD1200BB
4 766e.html ) this drive has a MTBF of 150,000 hours.
2 5.html
Well lets see if we take your math further that;
333hours/mo * 12months *5 years (off the graphic you posted) = 19,980 hours total. That's Horrible!
([H]ardOCP http://www.hardocp.com had posted a graphic from IBM's documentation that said the expected life of the drive was 5 years, hence the 5 above)
Lets see WesternDigital rates their 120G at 500,000 hours on the bottom of ; http://www.wdc.com/products/current/drives.asp?Mo
Lets compare a High end, high quality drive the Cheetah X15 it has a MTBF of 1,200,000 hours!
Ok lets play fair and compare it to something a little older like it is how about a Seagate ST4766E 667meg hd circa 3/29/90 (according to the bad sector sticker on the drive). According to Seagates web site ( http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/esdi/st
Lets try something older. How about an old ST 225, nope that's got a MTBF of 100,000 hours. http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/mfm/st2
Hmmm do you think if we grind enough IBM drives up we can make some lemonade?
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
You will get a new drive.
I can identify with the horrible noise. My own 75GXP _woke me up_ with that horrible noise.
On a slightly hopeful note; I've seen reports that you can temporarily revive the drive by mounting it upside-down. Try it, you have nothing to lose.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Then around August, I started hearing about problems with the 75GXP & possible problems with the 60GXP. Sure enough, in November the drive developed a bad sector. IBM replaced it (finally) in early January. However, they replaced my 40GB 60GXP with a 40GB 120GXP. Now, the article stated:
So, here's my question. I sure as hell wasn't aware of the limitation when I purchased the 60GXP. I read most of the documentation, but I don't have the damn time to read a 195-page engineering manual for a limitation whose existence wouldn't have even occured to me (or most other people, for that matter). The tech who processed my RMA mentioned heat as a problem or the Win98 HDD cache shutdown bug as problems. When I told him that the machine only got powered off once a month and the drive was mounted in a 5.25" bay with dual fans on the front & nothing above or below, he was satified & didn't mention shit about any 333 hour-limitation. I didn't look into the limitations on the 120GXP, because "Hey, the new whiz-bang model should be able to do all the same stuff as well or better, right?" What I want to know is, when this drive tanks, is IBM going to say "Tough shit, you ran it for more than double the monthly limit! Forget about your warranty replacement."? What kind of recourse will be availible to me when the drive containing my OS partitions (Linux & Windows) shits itself?
I guess that pixie dust IBM uses isn't so magical after all.
See my post above. When my 40GB 60GXP bit the big one, they replaced it in January with a 40GB 120GXP. I suspect that that is their new practice with RMA's on the Deskstar line, so you'll probable get a 120GXP - Option 3.
I can't stand hype, and thats what this article does. It polarizes the two sides of potential conflict. Yes the drives from hugarian factory failed. Yes these drives get very HOT. So, get some spacing and have a cooling system in place, or at least some sort of air flow maintanace.
...
I have on 60GXP from Singapore(?) and & 75GXP. I spaced them properly, and placed holes where they are located, so that powersupply fan would pull air around them. I never had any problems yet!
IBM excellent drives, if they be more understanding to the issue, it would be great, but making people hate great product, instead of instructing them how to work around the problem, that most other drives have is to say the least is counter productive. But then thats what reading slashdot is all about anyway
Heh,
I have a 2.5" 9mm IBM 4GB drive , circa 1998.
It has a sticker on it that says, and I quote , "Rattle noise is normal"
When you pick it up, it sounds like there is a screw floating around in there somewhere - not a reassuring sound for a hard disk.
Maybe all you need is a little sticker like that on your drive and things will be ok again.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
It seems that the larger my drives the shorter their life. am I just using the drives more now? I doubt it. I would like some recommendations for rock solid drives in the 40-80 gig range. I just got a maxtor 40 gig not long ago. (have to keep the pr0n and mp3s someplace) it cost me like 100$ which isn't bad at all but how long will it last? I've been buying cheap so I don't feel bad when the drive dies in a year. You can't say that you get what you pay for either cause I've seen super expensive drives that were trash, case in point the 120gxp. so i call on the minions that read /. and use drives more than anyone. what do you recommend? 5400s are fine for my uses.
-
I always power-down my systems when I am done using them. Why? Here's why.
Northridge Earthquake, January 17th, 1994. Two anecdotes.
Anecdote 1: One friend lives less than a mile from the epicenter. Whole house trashed. Powered-off Packard Hell computer literally flies 6 feet across the room. Computer written off as probably dead meat. One day, friend plugs the thing in just for the hell of it. Boots like a champ, keeps working for two years more before the Curse Of Packard Hell does the beast in.
Anecdote 2: Another friend runs a BBS. He is 5 miles from the epicenter and lives in the mountains where the house is literally sitting on bedrock. No liquifaction problem at all. Several computers on 24/7. Several hard drives lost.
Yes folks, I live in California. Earthquake country. Want to have your computer survive an earthquake? Keep it powered down unless you plan on using the thing. Hard drives had parking mechanisms and spin-down idle mode in 1994...the main things that have changed in the state-of-the-art on HDs is density and UDMA. Mechanically most HDs are pretty similar to those available in 1994.
If I wasn't living in California, I'd probably keep my machines on 24/7. Powercycling does take its toll. But earthquakes are a reality here and hard drives aren't at the disposable cost point yet. Ultimately you have to view hard drives as having a finite lifespan. But I want to maintain as much of a lifespan as possible.
BTW one last point...pre GXP IBM hard drives are very good. The Maxtor Diamond Max drive is based on an old IBM design. I wouldn't touch a GXP if you paid me but the old IBM hard drives are good stuff.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Yes, the higher-end SCSI drives (with associated higher spindle speeds, up to 15,000 RPM) are designed for full-time use, but aren't the mechanisms functionally the same? Isn't it just the case of a faster motor, more heatsinking around the drive (such as the Compaq 15K drives that have a big aluminum sink built into the tray), and an interface board for U160 instead of ATA100?
Almost. There's one more difference in there, and it's a big one: quality control. Same way the low-speed Athlons are just high-speed models that didn't pass QA checks, consumer drives are not manufactured to the same standards as server drives. To do so would be cost prohibitive--the cost increases exponentially as tolerances get closer. To build a drive that is capable of handling server-esque duties requires much tighter machining tolerances, better heat dissipation, better wear characteristics, etc. than a consumer drive. With that improved quality comes greater manufacturing cost. Think of it this way: would you put a cheap no-name printer on a network, send it a thousand pages a day, and expect it to stand up to the load, or would you step up to the plate and get a network-class LaserJet rated for 30K pages/month duty cycle? Yes, it's disappointing that these drives are big enough and cheap enough for us geeks to use them in servers, but at the end of the day, you have to remember that they're still consumer drives; by a strict definition ("to use wrongly" (dictionary.com)), using them as server drives constitutes abuse. If you want server drives, pay for them; if you want to pay for consumer drives, don't expect more than consumer quality. Enjoy it when you get it, but if it counts, pay for it.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
You are correct, Conner was indeed bought out by Seagate.
333 hours/month = 11 hours a day (including Christmas), or 16 hours per working day. No good for a server, adequate for most desktops.
However, there are two big issues here:
1) IBM sure didn't do much to make this limitation obvious as they were selling the drives. In fact, it's not at all clear that they posted this limitation before the first GXP's were sold, and according to VIA they have not _yet_ posted this limitation in the 75GXP data sheets at all. And if "60", "75", and "120" mean GB, then where in hell did IBM expect them to go but servers?
2) AFAIK, it's a nonsensical limitation. Most drives last longer running 24/7 than being turned on and off daily. It sounds like just a ploy to blame their bad design or workmanship on the customers -- "You ran it too much". Or does IBM know the bearings have a predictable and rather short wearout, and figures that 333 hrs/month will get you to that point in some fixed period (end warranty?). If that was known, building them at all indicates gross misunderstanding (or not caring) of what customers expect from their hardware, and ever selling them without being clearly marked "NOT FOR SERVERS, LIMITED OPERATING TIME" is grossly irresponsible, at least.
However, anecdotally it doesn't sound like a predictable wearout exists -- many of the reported failures were premature by anyone's measure, unless they were operated in a time warp for about 72 hours a day. Which brings me back to the first theory -- put bogus and unreasonable limitations in your data sheet so you can blame the customers for failures, even though the running hours probably weren't why they failed...
Several months ago, I purchased an IBM 75 GB GXP hard drive for use on my personal system. Formats and tests worked fine and without any flaw. However, I first started noticing problems when I reached 65 GB on the drive.
A loud scratch-scratch-scratch noise followed by seek complete errors would occur whenever trying to do anything in the file system. Usually the errors were recoverable, but were major problems because they would hault the system while the drive tried three or four times to read from what seemed like a crashed head. Something like a file search would take hours because of these errors.
I determined it was the drive at fault by wiping it and writing 0's to all the sectors using IBM tools. After 65 GB the drive was completly useless, and furthermore once you reached this "magic barrier" files located elsewhere on the drive would suffer similar errors.
I called IBM and after insisting it was a hardware error ("Well, Linux tends to disturb the drive's caching abilities."), I informed them I would require a drive to be shipped to me as I didn't feel like reinstalling my custom-built Linux OS which I have been tweaking for the better part of a year. I offered to give them a credit card for obvious reasons, but they would not accept it.
This was odd to me, because shipping the goods and then receiving the defective unit back in a box in the same package is common practice for many hardware manufactures. Apparently, not IBM.
So I buckled and I went out and bought a new non-IBM drive. I sent my DeskStar back, and I am still waiting for one after two weeks. The tech support person I spoke with indicated I would receive the same exact model and part # back, which means it can be potentially from the bad batch of drives. After reading previous Slashdot stories on these drives I brought the general reliability of the product line to his attention, and his only comment was that return rates were "Nothing out of the ordinary.".
This whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth about purchasing from IBM again. I expect products which are not defective and if they are, a replacement is sent immediatly without having to burden the customer with YOUR mistake.
Frankly, I am disgusted with the reliability of these drives and the grief IBM has put me through trying to get what I paid for ($270). I would not suggest IBM drives for use in any kind of production enviornment as the one I had couldn't even survive personal use. I also suggested to my employer that THEY NOT purchase from this line (for both the reliability and service issues) when they do their upgrades next month.
Maybe I am just one of the little "end users" out there, but that kind of damage hurts.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
...but you've hit on the hidden secret of the drive market.
There's nothing about the SCSI interface that makes drives more reliable, but because SCSI drives are sold to the higher-spec portions of the marketplace (professional workstations and servers), drive manufacturers send their higher-quality parts in that direction.
Check the MBTF numbers on any manufacturer's similar-size IDE and SCSI parts, and you may be rather surprised. Remember: you get what you pay for.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
IDE gets its clock from the PCI bus, so anytime an overclock raises that above 33.3MHz, the hard drives are overclocked.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
I've had numerous hard drives fail and for numerous reasons.
My PC remains on 24/7. It gets switched off during power outages and for transportation to/from LAN party events, but other than that, it stays on all the time. I have *never* had a hard drive fail in this machine, mind you, I've always bought good qualtiy power supplies although I have never paid any real attention to cooling as I have seven hard drives in a full tower case, there's not much room for a fan!
My brother's got a small, average systen. His power supply died a year ago and ( I suspect) took a Quantum Fireball CX with it. 13GB of data is still there on the disk but the controller board stopped spinning the drive up, then the main IC decided to burn. The Australian distributor for Quantum told me that they would not replace the drive due to that fact. He also lost a Quantum 3.2GB disk in it which I've swapped controller boards on - it's a physical problem. He turns his PC on and off all the time.
My current PC has the following drives:
4x Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB ATA disks in RAID 0
1x IBM 75GXP 30GB (as primary boot drive)
1x Maxtor 60GB 5400RPM disk (bought a week after I got cable Internet almost two years ago).
The IBM drive has been flawless although I back-up frequently. The Maxtor drive has also been fantastic, although you'll find that the 5400s are more reliable than the 7200s these days. The Seagates have been fine, too, and while the IBM outperforms them, they're silent and solid.
The point here is that hard drives seem to prefer 24/7 operation than being powered on/off every day. By spinning these drives up and down, you not only increase the chances of a head crash but you place more strain on the drive.
On topic, I've had several friends who have had their IBM drives die on me. Some are in 24/7 machines, others in desktop machines with low usage. It's interesting to note that I know two people who have had 75GB 75GXP drive and both have had theirs replaced, one of them twice. I know three people who have had 45GB drives fail on them. I know one person who's had a 30GB drive fail on them. I don't know anybody who's had the 20GB or 15GB models fail.
Mind you, i know a LOT of people who have the 30 and 45GB variants. So it seems tbat it's related to the amount of disk platters in the drive. More platters = more heat. So cooling seems to be the culprit here.
What bothers me, is that I recently suggested an 80GB drive to a friend, a 120GXP series drive. Now that IBM have announced their little limitation, I'm now going to look VERY bad in the eyes of that friend. Sigh.
The last thing I wish to mention is with regards to my Seagate 80GB drives. These drives underperform a single drive when placed in a RAID 0 configuration. While this bothers me, Seagate have offered a refund for their drives apparently. Pity Seagate won't admit to it publically, so it's not just IBM who are doing this sort of thing...
.t
I just got a Quantum (now Maxtor) Atlas 10K III for $320 (Canadian - that's just US$200). The premium which you pay for a SCSI system is really not that bad - basically US$100-200 for the host adapter; plus US$100 more per HD, if you don't need booming capacity. In return you get superior performance and reliability.
IDE is OK for X terminals, as well as the ubiquitous, shitty and disposable, Win9x boxes in the world. But *real* computers, be they serious workstations or servers, deserve SCSI.
The performance advantage for SCSI drives is larger than you would guess by just looking at the spindle speeds. And in my experience, the failure rate for IDE drives is vastly higher than for SCSI drives, under similar workloads - they're just built for a more demanding life.
-- Mike Greaves
Wouldn't it be ironic to have written a song titled "Ironic" with lyrics that describe situations seemingly exemplifying irony but in fact none of the situations you described in the song were actually ironic? Hmmm...
maru
I can vouch for those bigfoots. Around the time they were popular, I was working in the repair department of a computer store. We got about 1/3rd back, malfunctioning. Needless to say, we stopped selling them.
The problem, according to the manufacturer (quantum at the time) was that the head got magnetized, and clung to the side of the drive. The solution, again according to quantum, was to hit the side of the drive with a hammer, and resell the drive.
The fireball was another bad drive, although not as bad the bigfoot. I personally managed to dissolve two in 6 months.
After that, I switched to western digital and stayed there ever since. They do not make the best drives, nor the fastest. But they do have the best service: any drive malfunctioning (within it's warranty period of 3 years) is replaced within a week, without much hassles. Now, last time I did return a drive was over 2 years ago (as an individual, not for the forementioned shop), so I wouldn't know how it is today, but as they are still in business, I reckon it's still good.
Seagate is another company with a good rep in the stores, but I never had any personal experience with them.
the pun is mightier than the sword
No, they do not. And unlike you, I'll back up what I say with specs:
IBM 120GXP peak current: 12V/2.0A, 5V/.74A
Maxtor Fireball Plus AS: 12V/2.4A, 5V/.90A
Western Digital WD1000JB: 12V/2.2A, 5V/.55A
IBM 120GXP idle current: 6.7W
Maxtor Fireball Plus AS: 7.5W
Western Digital WD1000JB: 7.25W
The IBM drive uses more power than some and less than others. It is just about normal in its power consumption. Next time, do your research before claiming that someone is wrong.