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More on IBM 75GXP Drive Fiasco

Posted by michael on from the quality-control-is-priority-one dept.

FolkImplosion writes "Internal documents have been released suggesting that IBM was well-aware that its click-of-death 75GXP hard drives had a failure rate of as much as 10 times that of its competitors. IBM apparently sold drives it knew were faulty into distribution, and reportedly planned to deal with any issues with marketing spin rather than a fixing the problem. This new information should help bolster a class action suit that accuses IBM knowingly shipped defective 75GXP drives with abnormally high failure rates." The lawfirm pursuing the class action suit has a page of information, including the latest news report (pdf) on information coming out in the suits. See also our original story about the drive failures.

14 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Reputation by radionotme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This can't do IBM's reputation much good - fortunately for them the damage should be minimised since they no longer sell hard disks directly (so little loss of business)

    1. Re:Reputation by ob1knob777 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder if this was why they sold the hard disk business off to Hitachi in the first place. Maybe they knew about the high failure rate and wanted to wash their hands of the whole mess before it got too bad?

  2. Institutional behaviour by heironymouscoward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not rarely corporate policy to release faulty products. (Microsoft freaks, step aside, please.)

    What happens is that internal politics turn problems into cover ups. Someone, somewhere decides that it's more logical to ignore the issue than to address it. The falacy continues up the line, since decisions are often based on information from 'down the line'.

    The best thing IBM can do is to issue a general recall, offer generous replacement policies ("bring it in, we'll fix it on the spot") and try to recover their image as a reliable drive manufacturer. Otherwise their HD business is down the drain.

    Oh wait! They sold it to Fujitsu! OK, sue their asses!

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature
    1. Re:Institutional behaviour by millahtime · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "...you have to transfer all the data over to the new one... which is a royal pain in the arse..."

      I hate to point this out but should should do the whole backup thing. I mean even a high reliability HD occasionally fails.

      --
      Evolution or ID?
  3. I have one ... by robnauta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had one. After about a year it failed, in summer so I suspect it had been running too hot. More and more bad sectors with the familiar scraping sound.

    But after I got tired of running scandisk for hours to mark bad sectors daily, I erased it with IBM's DFT (drive fitness test).
    And it has been fine ever since.

    It looked like the heat made it lose its calibration, unable to find the exact position on the disk for some sectors.

    1. Re:I have one ... by phrasebook · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I had mine fail after about 9 months, and it was also pretty hot in my case, and during summer. I also had a 60GXP in there so I was worried. After it failed I bought a new case with fans right in front of the hard drives. The 60GXP is still going fine but is extremely noisy now (not clicking, just whine).

      IBM's DFT thing didn't work for me. It cleared the drive for a little while but the noises came back and it wouldn't work.

      Didn't seem related to heat. Sometimes it'd occur as soon as it spun up, sometimes it would be fine for days. I think if it spun up normally, it would keep going ok until it was next powered on.

      Ever since then I've been paranoid about hard drives and went to the trouble of mirroring all the partitions on my server using linux software RAID-1. Works nicely and boots off either drive.

  4. Isn't that the way we do things now? by millahtime · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't we build cheaper things that are less reliable so that you have to buy new ones more often. Many industries already do that. They can make a light bulb that goes for 10 or 20 years no problem. And I can buy one that is garunteed to go for 5 years. But there are still ones that have 2500 hours. This concept isn't something new.

    --
    Evolution or ID?
  5. Lawyers to pocket $100M, consumers to get coupon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    People, get real. This is all about the lawyers.

    The lawyers are suing IBM. They are paying all the costs. The "class" is made up of losers who lend their names by affirming they bought a "defective drive."

    In the end, the lawyers will get to keep 30% to 50% of the settlement or award (the cash component); the losers will get a coupon for discounts on the purchase of IBM stuff.

    If you feel you have been wronged by because your 1,000,000 hour MTBF drive will only last 900,000 hours, simply tell 10 of your friends and don't buy any IBM stuff.

    Believe me, that's a lot more painful to IBM and a lot less destructive to our society.

  6. Not only the 75GXP by Troed · · Score: 5, Informative

    .. the same problem applied to the 60GXP and the earliest 120GXP drives (a friend just had his 120GXP click to death the other week) aswell.

    The problem can be solved with a software upgrade in the drive.

    This site has it all: http://www.pheuron.de/index.htm?deathstar.htm

    --
    it's in my head
  7. Any still running? by eamber · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does anyone still have one of these? I purchased two 30 gig 75GXP's - first one died after about 2 months. The second after 6.

    I RMA'd them - drive 1 was RMA'd a total of 6 times; drive 2, 7 times.

    I got so disgusted with dealing with them that I replaced them outright with larger Maxtor drives and haven't had a problem since.

    I sold one of the IBM drives on ebay to some poor sucker - the other one is sitting on a shelf waiting to be taken to the firing range.

    1. Re:Any still running? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Runs great A+++++++ Seller BEST Hardrive Ive ever owned!!!!!!!!!!

  8. Deskstar: very faulty, but very cool... by ozbird · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We had a 20GB IBM Deskstar (probably 60GXP series) HDD fail at work recently; it was part of a mirrored (RAID 1) array, so no serious harm was done.

    Being inquisitive folk, we cracked open the case to see what was inside. The cause of the failure was abundantly clear: the head assemblies had scraped the shiny, magnetic coating off about 2/3rds of the disk surface (on both sides) revealing the glass platter. I've never seen a glass platter before - they are so cool! :-D

    The extent of damage was equally impressive; our "museum" of salvaged bits includes various head-crashed platters of considerable vintages, but this disk will certainly take pride of place in the collection.

  9. Re:Makes me wonder about the Hitachi ones out now? by hattmoward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, temperature was an issue. If my memory is working right, the issue with the 75GXP disks was in the thermal compensation... that is, they incorrectly compensate for thermal expansion of the platters through r/w head positioning. It seems like this is actually one of the most common problems with 2.5" disks too... I've had many of those fail, and I can read from them for a few minutes until they get warm... Nothing like trying to recover the CEO's laptop using only 'dd' :)

  10. Re:Minor correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I have a gun with six chambers. I put one bullet in a chamber, and left the other ones empty. Then I put the gun to my head, and pulled the trigger.


    So anyway, you can chalk me up as a Russian Roulett success story. No complaints here.