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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Jose on August 11, 2003, 08:31:39 AM
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Having seen some posts around last week, bout some IBM HD's not working well I thought I'd ask if someone else had problems with those cause I saw a bargain on a 20gb one and I'm tempted...
Thx
It's a 2.5" one by the way
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I used two notebook HD's of IBM and they still work fine.
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I had IBM's 10GB 3,5" IDE drive earlier, worked just fine. Now it's replaced with Maxtor's 40GB disk. And then I have three older IBM's SCSI disks, work fine too ;)
Never had any problems with HD:s on Amiga, and I've tried tens of them.
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Hmm we had a bunch of IBM 120gxp ibm drives here at work ... all are dead now.
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What did you do with your IBM GXP 120 IBM drives? Mine IBM GXP 120 works fine. The capacity is 40 GB.
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I used a 15gb IBM 'Travelstar' notebook drive...
worked well, and almost dead silent, just a
slight access crunch if you listen close.
Of course, configuring "big" drives on the
crappy 1200 IDE is the real issue...what a
nightmare...:)
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I've had a 60 GB BM Deskstar, bought cheap.
Lasted 9 months then began clicking uncontrollably and loosing data. Using the IBM recovery suite from their website , I changed each flag to zero - like IBM told me....
And now it is completely useless. (except as a paperweight).
Avoid IBM harddrives like the plague! just check out the link for the lowdown ::destroy:
TechReport IBM harddisk Survey (http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/2799/37/)
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And you think that in a year, a huge corporation like IBM won't try their best to fix the problems? Yes, a few of their GXP series had faults, and then someone at IBM said something to the effect of "our drives aren't meant to be used in a 24x7 environment" but that was refuted by IBM almost immediately. I've had 12 IBM disks, 60GB and 120GB running as a server for over 2 years now. None has failed.
IBM's disks were faulty, yes. Are they now?
Intel's P60 had serious faults too, some time ago. Avoid them like the plague! ;)
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I had a 40GB IBM disk of that series that popped its clogs as well. A lot of lost data. I now use a Seagate B IV 60GB and back up data to CD/laptop regularly :-)
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I have a 20GB IBM IDE Hard Disk, it perfomed perfectly for 2 years. It started making crunching noises about 6 months ago but it still performs well in a cheap PC I built for my mate who was on a tight budget.
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reflect wrote:
And you think that in a year, a huge corporation like IBM won't try their best to fix the problems?
IBM never did fix the problems - they just sold their hard drive division to Hitachi instead.
Over the past couple of years I've seen more dead IBM deskstars than every other make of hard drive combined. They are awful devices with the life-span of a fruit fly. :-(
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IBM drives often becomes very hot, and at the same time they are very sensitive to heat. AFAIK, a lot of the dead IBM drives died the overheating death. I have killed both a desk star and an ultra star by neglecting this fact. So don't put them too tight together (if you use more than one), and make sure that there is a constant and sufficient air flow to cool them down.
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IBM never did fix the problems - they just sold their hard drive division to Hitachi instead.
Over the past couple of years I've seen more dead IBM deskstars than every other make of hard drive combined. They are awful devices with the life-span of a fruit fly. :-(
IBM's division made a lot of drives. A lot of drives. Some models were/are wonderful, some utter crap. Remember, in a company as huge as IBM, they had separate teams working on RAID-purposed mechanisms, low-cost desktops, portable/micro-drives, and so on.
Rumor suggests the 'Deathstars' - those awful, fruit-fly-lived GXPs - were, in part, a victim of design by committee. (At least, if there's any truth at all to the rumor that the disk controller couldn't keep up with the bitrates off the denser platters as they launched the 60 and 120GB models - leading to dropped bits, including the various internal control signals encoded on the platters, which would then lead to wonderful thunking, head crashing, etc.)
Of course, it's very hard to know how to pick a winner - IBM certainly certified even those bad drives for use in 'reliable' configurations - but it's good to know what you're up against. IBM, and presumably now Hitachi, are prone to these sort of lemon-model problems - same goes for Seagate, perhaps, with their wide array of drives... Contrast to Fujitsu's recent debacle, traced reputably (as in, not a rumor, it's generally accepted) to the use of a bad potting epoxy/ceramic on certain critical chips (possibly the fault of a third-party?)... or Western Digital, who, from anecdotal evidence, just seem prone to quality control problems across the board.
It's a shame the Deathstars sucked, it certainly hurt IBM's reputation (and between that and Fujitsu, it's made it that much harder to pick a manufacturer you could call 'reliable'), and they certainly handled it poorly. Based on organization and 'philosophy,' I'd say Seagate is equally at risk for that sort of problem (though, since they haven't had one recently, I'd say their prerelease testing and QA have thus far been working better than IBM's did), while Quantum/Maxtor, with their smaller lineup- sharing more parts across more models- seems potentially more prone to WD-style 'across-the-board' issues. (That said, I've not had any firsthand experience with Maxtor since the 500MB era.)
I try to like Fujitsu, and I don't think anyone could've predicted their trouble (whether the chips were produced internally or by a third party... who'd expect bad packaging on ICs in the 21st century? We were supposed to have figured that out ten years ago!)... Shame they shot the food when it came time to recall/replace, too.
But like I'm saying, the best you can do is try to have a 'feel' for the companies, make sure nobody else is already outright complaining about the particular model you're considering, and try to gauge your risks appropriately. No drive lives forever, unless it's a Micropolis, in which case it was probably stillborn. ;)
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This might be worth taking a look at:
http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/2799/17/
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all my hdd's are iBM , with one exception a maxtor 40gb disk, that is crap...very bad.., it overheats in this summerheat, the ibm disks have no probs at all.
(the maxtor is now resting, refused to work one day due to heat..)
i have 120gb ibm's , 80 , 40 , 46 , 20 and 10gb disks , none have been a prob in the amiga, but i must add i have always used some sort of 4way adapter and now lately i use fastata from elbox.
also, the 46gb disks and several more from ibm are the ones u should stay away from, i mananged to fix one of em (why i have it) as my friend gave it to me as it refused to work..
cheers'
pps:maxtor, if u buy it...buy a fan for it also.
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Bluh. And that said, obviously, any compatibilities/incompatibilities with IBMs would have to be traced back to whatever particular (on-disk) controller wouldn't play nice, and the particular models or model line using that design. If you compare a DFHS or something with a GXP (brought up again only because I don't know any other IBM models, heh), you may as well be comparing Quantum to Seagate - they're just utterly different, even though they're both IBMs.
Here's a thought on the issue - I picked up a certain Seagate from the era when Pentiums and x86 boards as a whole were transitioning from 5V to 3.3V signaling. I have no idea what the IDE/ATA/UDMA spec is supposed to be, but apparently, at some point, a transition in signaling voltage was made. There was a known problem with the (pre-UATA) Seagate, defined as incompatibilty when run on a specific newer (UATA) Intel chipset (whichever ones used the 'PIIX4'? Ugh, been a while), because it couldn't deal properly with the reduction in voltages. Somehow, I bet that model won't work on any other UATA controller made since, but Seagate was probably holding out hope that future chipsets would detect and go back to 5V swing for older drives... and maybe they do. :-? Modern drives are designed to tolerate a fairly wide range of swing, so they can fall back or forward as appropriate.
So, here's a thought. The AGA Amigas were making some transitions of their own in that department, weren't they? Maybe? And if not, then maybe IBM had the opposite problem on one of their drives, producing a UATA-era model that wouldn't tolerate things when placed on a 5V bus?
Of course, I'm probably totally wrong, and it's probably just mysterious IDE retardation of the same sort that kept early Conners from sharing a channel with other manufacturers' drives.
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I have an IBM 18 Gig UW-SCSI-III in my A4000T with OS 3.9. It works fine. Been running 24x7 for the past year and a half.
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Never buy used. I bought 3 of them and they started dying. Otherwise if HDtoolbox or other 3rd party software from Aminet can partition them for you, you're in good shape. However, I'd stay away from EIDE cdroms--a nightmare to configure them especially thru IDE-Fix unless you can get away with the cat-weasel interface.
:-)
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Thx guys. What a hell I bought it! . It's a 2.5" TravelStar with 20Gb. Let's see what it does when I have time to install it.
8-)
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My 40 gig ibm drive developed problems after just one year a right pile of junk .I now stick to the most reliable drives i have had which are maxtor my 120 gig has been working for about a year at about 8 hours and more a day never gets hot unlike my ibm which was like a heater.and my amigaone has a seagate 60 gig my other favorite make.
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IBM's SCSI ultrastar lines previous to the GXP were known for their high throughput and strong reliability. I've been using a U166 Ultrastar (don't remember the model letters, it's the line that was immediately previous to GXP) for almost a couple years now and it's been wonderful.
The other thing that is good with IBM is they have an online setup for obtaining RMA's, and their online system can tell you whether or not a drive is still covered under warranty (with ultrastar lines, it was usually 5 years)via it's serial number. No hours of struggling with tech support and digging around for ancient invoices just to get your damaged drive replaced.