[ILUG] Hardware queries

[Niall O Broin]

On Wednesday 14 July 2004, rick at linuxmafia.com (Rick Moen) wrote:

>Exactly.  But the following makes me curious:
>
>> I have to agree with John Looney here. One's as bad as the next,
>> except when somebody gets it seriously wrong and becomes very much
>> worse e.g. IBM with the DeathStar series of drives.
>
>"IBM Deskstar" was an umbrella brand covering a tremendous number of
>models.  My understanding is that the "60GXP" (60GB) and "75GXP" (75GB)
>series of models were the only ones that had quality control problems.
>(Each of those was a standard IBM transport mechanism and platter
>design, which then got an ATA or SCSI electronics card, and then was
>either OEMed or not and got an actual model number tailored to its
>market niche.)
>
>Anyhow, long experience with people jumping to conclusions about
>hardware from sloppy data makes me skeptical about claims that recent
>IBM Deskstar drives _generally_ have high failure rates.   I'd be
>interested to hear reports from people who aren't just badly remembering
>and repeating the 60GXP / 75GXP reports from elsewhere.

This may well be true. But I have had problems with at least TWO different
models of the Deathstar (I prefer that spelling BTW, inaccurate as it is)
range so I've taken the easy way out - I just won't buy any of them any more.

Just had a thought (after writing the above) and went over to the dead disk
pile in which I find the following models of Deathstar drives

DTLA-307030 (x 3)
IC35L080AVVA07-0
IC35L120AVVA07-0

NONE of those are 60GXP or 75GXP, you may note. I had 8 x 75GXP in a box once,
at least 5 of which failed over time. Justified by global statistics or not,
I'm not giving IBM (or Hitachi, now) another red cent for disk drives.



Niall