What do you guys think of these now that the 120 and 180gxp lines are out? I know all about the 2 "Deathstar" lines, but I think they cleaned up their act.
How about the performance compared to WD or Maxtor?
IBM´s newer drives has been a lot better than the deathstars and seem to hold on. A big credit goes to Hitachi that produces the drives theese days, at least that is what i think. I know a lot of the Deathstars where made in Hungary and the Philippines before, but im not sure if the "Hitachis" are produced there or not.
I recently bought a 180GXP for storage, because it was cheap. I don't have it plugged in half the time, I wouldn't of bought it if I was going to properly use it.
Having said that though, a lot the rigs around my flat have 120GXP'S in them, and they've been running fine for well over a year or so. I think though the main reason I still am not enclined to even consider buying an IBM drive for general use is because I honestly think they aren't very good drives overall (at least in comparison with other popular drives on the market). They are noisy and compared to WD their performance is quite inconsistent.
The only real reason anyone should have for buying one at the moment, would be because they are cheap.
Yeah, I would agree with that. But I gentle hum I can take, noisy accessing I can't.
/me looks down at his rig, knowing his IBM drive is connected and running. Then looks accross the room to where a hammer sits innocently by his tool kit.
I will never buy anything tainted by the memory of IBM.
Hitachi will have to prove themselves for years before I'd risk them - just because I wonder if the IBM disease will enter their line, too.
I had not one, but TWO of the infamous Deskstar drives. Both crapped out after about a year (which is better than what some people got). They were RMA'd, and one of the replacement drives just croaked - that notorious "Tssst, Tssst, Tssst" sound, followed by slow response time, culminating in death. It's boxed up on the counter waiting for it's trip to the Post Office.
I know that many of their other drives have worked fine for others, but after 3 out of 4 (so far...) croaking on me I wouldn't give them any of my dough again, even for a good drive.
Prof
PS: The other replacement drive was given to my niece last August when she was trying to build a decent computer on a tight budget. I saw her the other day and warned her that she'd better make good use of her CD Burner if she has any data she cares about.
My IBM drives worked flawlessly for 15 months before one of them decided to quit on me. I guess I got lucky. I bought a WD80 8mb drive to replace them, and it's fine. It's alot quieter than the IBM drives were. Though the constant clicking and power up noises from the deathstars were comforting, I knew they were working at least
I've been running 2-120GXP drives I received as replacements for 2-75 GXP Deathstars and so far they have run fine for almost 1 1/2 years. With that said, there is no way that I would spend any more money on IBM/Hitachi drives for several years to come until they can prove reliability to me again. I also have an old 14.4 DTTA ATA33 drive that's still going strong, which is the reason that I went with the 75GXP drives in the first place.
Methinks that the IBM engineers snorted too much pixie dust when designing the 75GXP and 60GXP drives.
No, not presently. The original 75GXP drives were RAID0'ed until the first one took a dump. Luckily, that machine has a tape backup so I didn't lose too much information between my last backup and when the drive crapped out.
After that experience, the only RAID I would run would be RAID 1, 10 or 5, so I would be able to get back up to speed easily in case of a drive failure.
I did the Raid thingy on two different computers for several years. I liked it well enough as far as performance goes, but found that even small things (like a power outage) could occasionally fritz up the array. It got to the point where I grew tired of rebuilding my whole setup every six months.
I'm not totally jaded on the Raid idea. To be fair I have just used the Raid "lite" built into my Abit KT7A-RAID and an Asus A7V133-Raid. I wonder if having a "real" raid controller would make things more stable. Also, the unreliable IBM drives were certainly a factor in my decision to drop the Raid for the time being.
I used a BIOS mod from a guy called "Crazy Ape" on the Asus board to allow me to use the Raid controller as an ATA-100 controller - the Promise chip had been set on the board originally to be Raid-only. Between the two boards, I'd have to say that I prefer the Highpoint controller on the Abit board to the Promise ("Speed Bios" - adds what seems like hours to boot time) controller on the Asus.
I'll also probably go back to Raid when I am able to set up a system where I have a drive big enough to ghost a backup, in the event of more crapola.
I'll tell you, having a "real" caching raid controller with it's own processor makes a huge differance. The only RAID controller I'll sell in client's servers anymore is the Adaptec 2400A (unless they're going SCSI), because dealing with those crappy software RAID cards got to be too much hassle. The Adaptec 2400A has an intel i960 controller, it's own RAM, and a highpoint controller per two channels. It's $400 but it's the only way to do serious RAID for IDE.
The newer IBM/Hitachi's kick ass performance wise. Just go to storagereview and see some of the results. I don't know about reliability over the long run though...
Despite the bad reputation I still love my pair of 75GXP's, they're still working just fine on a RAID0 array...
I use only IBM´s in all 3 PC´s in the house. Alltogether there are 8 HDD´s used running in 3 machines.
No.1 is our server with 1 x 80GB 180 GXP and 2 x 60GB IC35L060AVVA07
No. 2 is Raid 0 with 2 x 60GB 120 GXP´s + 1 x 30 GB DTLA 307030 for backup
No. 3 is Raid 0 with 2 x 30GB DTLA 307030
The first DTLA 307030 which I bought in 2000 failed with a headcrash. Since that time I did a low level format with each IBM HDD I instaled. Once 1 drive ( non Raid ) gave me a problem. Touching the power connector caused a klicking scratching noise and the system did hang. Tightening a loosend screw holding the pcb near the connector solved the problem. Until that time I never had a HDD related problem again.
JPP
Comments
It's a 120gxp and it was bought exactly a year and 2 days ago
Having said that though, a lot the rigs around my flat have 120GXP'S in them, and they've been running fine for well over a year or so. I think though the main reason I still am not enclined to even consider buying an IBM drive for general use is because I honestly think they aren't very good drives overall (at least in comparison with other popular drives on the market). They are noisy and compared to WD their performance is quite inconsistent.
The only real reason anyone should have for buying one at the moment, would be because they are cheap.
Anyway, I think the seeking noise of my IBM is louder but the overall noise of my WD is louder for some reason.
/me looks down at his rig, knowing his IBM drive is connected and running. Then looks accross the room to where a hammer sits innocently by his tool kit.
Hitachi will have to prove themselves for years before I'd risk them - just because I wonder if the IBM disease will enter their line, too.
I had not one, but TWO of the infamous Deskstar drives. Both crapped out after about a year (which is better than what some people got). They were RMA'd, and one of the replacement drives just croaked - that notorious "Tssst, Tssst, Tssst" sound, followed by slow response time, culminating in death. It's boxed up on the counter waiting for it's trip to the Post Office.
I know that many of their other drives have worked fine for others, but after 3 out of 4 (so far...) croaking on me I wouldn't give them any of my dough again, even for a good drive.
Prof
PS: The other replacement drive was given to my niece last August when she was trying to build a decent computer on a tight budget. I saw her the other day and warned her that she'd better make good use of her CD Burner if she has any data she cares about.
Methinks that the IBM engineers snorted too much pixie dust when designing the 75GXP and 60GXP drives.
No, not presently. The original 75GXP drives were RAID0'ed until the first one took a dump.
After that experience, the only RAID I would run would be RAID 1, 10 or 5, so I would be able to get back up to speed easily in case of a drive failure.
Although I use it myself, cause i love being 1337.
I'm not totally jaded on the Raid idea. To be fair I have just used the Raid "lite" built into my Abit KT7A-RAID and an Asus A7V133-Raid. I wonder if having a "real" raid controller would make things more stable. Also, the unreliable IBM drives were certainly a factor in my decision to drop the Raid for the time being.
I used a BIOS mod from a guy called "Crazy Ape" on the Asus board to allow me to use the Raid controller as an ATA-100 controller - the Promise chip had been set on the board originally to be Raid-only. Between the two boards, I'd have to say that I prefer the Highpoint controller on the Abit board to the Promise ("Speed Bios" - adds what seems like hours to boot time) controller on the Asus.
I'll also probably go back to Raid when I am able to set up a system where I have a drive big enough to ghost a backup, in the event of more crapola.
Prof
It would have to sweep the floor and do the dishes (and, ahem, perhaps some other domestic duties) for me to get one of those.
Of course, if I had the dough I would probably get one - after I upgraded my miserable old Video card (see sig).;)
Prof
Despite the bad reputation I still love my pair of 75GXP's, they're still working just fine on a RAID0 array...
No.1 is our server with 1 x 80GB 180 GXP and 2 x 60GB IC35L060AVVA07
No. 2 is Raid 0 with 2 x 60GB 120 GXP´s + 1 x 30 GB DTLA 307030 for backup
No. 3 is Raid 0 with 2 x 30GB DTLA 307030
The first DTLA 307030 which I bought in 2000 failed with a headcrash. Since that time I did a low level format with each IBM HDD I instaled. Once 1 drive ( non Raid ) gave me a problem. Touching the power connector caused a klicking scratching noise and the system did hang. Tightening a loosend screw holding the pcb near the connector solved the problem. Until that time I never had a HDD related problem again.
JPP