Hit by the "DeathStar"

[Glaucus]

Yup, it finally happened. My IBM 60GXP DeskStar 40GB (aka DeathStar) finally bit the dust!  Ugh!!! When I bought this I was unaware of this drive's less then spectacular reliability. In fact, the reputation of these drives was so good that IBM sold off it's HD manucaturing division to Hitachi (why Hitachi bought it, I don't know, but I'm staying away from Hitachi drives as well). At least that's what I read yesterday from various different articles while searching for recovery tools. I also read that there's a class action lawsuite against IBM because of these crappy drives.

Anyway, lucky for me, the partition that I store all my data and files is mostly intact (and already mostly salvaged onto my new Western Digital 80GB drive). My OS partition is now swiss cheese and I haven't bothered checking the partition where I install my apps (without the registry, what's the point?). So for the next few days I'll be busy re-installing and re-tweaking my setup.

Oh joy of joys...  Ugh! Sometimes I just hate computers (and yes, I did have somewhat recent backups, but I might as well just re-install, don't trust the backup software anyway).

  - Mike

[Glaucus]

I trust the little computer shop I regularly shop at. I asked them what they recommended and they told me it's a toss up between Seagate and Western Digital. Seagate, they said, was perhaps more reliable while the WD would be a tad faster.

They did however warn me to stay away from Seagate SATA drives as they're about as bad as the DeathStars.

And as for IBM, I too understand that all manufacturers make duds, but the 60GXP was actually a successor to the 75GXP (yeah, it seems backwards, but that's what I read in some article), which had an even worse track record. They should have put more effort into fixing the design flaw before putting out a new product!

  - Mike