Failures of IBM Deskstar 75GXP series hard disks

[Matthew Hawkins]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, David Price wrote:
> Hi.  I just thought I should warn people about an unusually high
> failure rate of IBM's Deskstar 75GXP series hard disks.

Thankyou Quantum/Seagate employee ;-)

I've seen one of these disks fail out of 30 or so (it got the dreaded
tick of death after 6-8 months or so of 24/7 VB development - read "boot
M$ Windows, code, compile, run, crash, repeat" with the odd "boot
M$ Windows, crash, repeat" thrown in for good measure).  I could argue that
it perhaps exceeded the manufacturers specified maximum powerups.

I guess you can claim 1/30 as "unusually high", other people like myself
would argue that 29/30 is "unusually high" and 1/30 is "normal".

I've seen this apparent problem with the DTLA drives mentioned many
times on the Internet, mostly from US-based people which makes me
believe it was a regional problem (bad batch sent there).  I've yet to
actually encounter it, which is strange considering this drive series
I've been recommending and purchasing for a number of years.

I'm not trying to say that there isn't a problem, I'm just saying that
in my experience there's been a heck of a lot more heresay about it than
actual evidence.  I'm not naive enough to accept at face value every
rumour spread about a product that threw a competitor off the #1 best
seller spot it had held for years, in a matter of months.

-- 
Matt