IBM DeskStar 75GXP Hard Drive Failures?

Sean Kelly asks: "Like a lot of other people, I went out and bought myself a nice 60GB IBM DeskStar 75GXP (ATA100, 7200rpm) hard drive to put in my sparkling new computer. Boy was that a mistake! A few months after I got the drive, it failed with horrific grinding and clicking noises, plus random data loss. So I RMA'd the first one and got a 'SERVICEABLE USED PART' replacement from IBM, which died of the same death after another few months. Not getting the hint, I RMA'd that one. Last week, I got the refab. drive back from IBM and it has already died, in less than a week! This time I did some site searching and found many people are having problems with this drive. Sites such as The Inquirer, Hexus, Tech Report, Hardware One, Sysopt, and even this PCWorld have dedicated articles, forums and user reviews to these failing and defective drives. From what I can understand, IBM is not publicly acknowledging that they screwed up here. How many other people out there have had their 75GXP (or 60GXP) drives fail? What size were they? What part number? What did IBM do about it? It is my opinion that IBM should do something about this, since I've seen an unnaturally high number of complaints about this drive now that I started looking for customer feedback. Also, here is a letter I sent to IBM explaining my frustration with them. It has more information in it."

Mine are pretty good

[keesh]

I've been running a pair as RAID-0 (yeah, I know...) for a couple of months, haven't had any major problems. The drives seem to seek to the inner track and back more often than my Seagate drive, but it's rarely a problem.

I've had problems with other drives before because of a power supply which was slightly too low voltage -- it seems a few drives are overly sensitive to minor voltage drops.

Oh the humanity

[Phredward]

Most of my data is, last time I checked, still on my 60gig drive. It clicks horribly, and I'm sure my data will be gone soon. The 75 gig drive that IBM sent me (took 2-3 weeks to arrive, tho this was across september 11) to RMA my first drive showed up DOA. My only thought is to buy another brand of drive, copy my data off, keep RMAing until I get one that works, and sell it to some pour sob. I'd feel bad about doing it too.

Maxtor

[TheSHAD0W]

I've had a lot of luck with Maxtor's newer model drives. I have several of their 80-gig HDs, and none has crapped out on me yet. And the price is right; Maxtor 80 giggers can be had at CompUSA for $200.

Another victim of the "Deathstar"...

[Gandalf_007]

Count me among those hit by it. I bought a 30GB Deskstar 75GXP (model DTLA-307030) a little over a year ago. It worked perfectly fine until about a month ago, when accessing a certain location on the disk would result in grinding noises, and then the computer locking up completely. The drive failed IBM's drive fitness test, so I RMA'd it. I got a 30GB Deskstar 60GXP (model IC35L030AVER07, which btw is an OEM-only model, since the 60GXP line is 20GB/platter).

I guess they decided there were enough problems with the 75GXP line that they sent me a 60GXP. I haven't heard of any problems with the 60GXP line, and to boot it's much quieter than my old 75GXP -- I can't even hear it seek unless I listen very closely.

Try StorageReview.com for more information

[ArcticChicken]

Take a look at the discussion forums over at StorageReview.com [storagereview.com]. There have been several discussions about the 75GXP (and 60GXP) over there.

Case in point, some of their readers are currently running an unofficial survey [storagereview.com].

Is It Manufactured In Hungary?

[denzo]

General concensus in messages boards seems to be that IBM hard drives manufactured in Hungary seem to fail at a greater rate than from other factories.

I myself have had a failed IBM hard drive. It was defective upon shipping, and had it replaced immediately with an advance RMA. The replacement failed on me about a month later, and I didn't qualify for an advance RMA because I already RMA'ed it once (even though the first one didn't techically fail on me, it was DOA). This was a 10GB Deskstar 14GXP (I think).

So during the excruciating one-month replacement, I bought a Maxtor drive, and now use it as my primary drive (I'm not trusting my third IBM replacement). The Maxtor's a faster drive anyway, so I'm not complaining. I'll just stay clear of IBMs for a while.

60GXP replaces 75GXP

[Gandalf_007]

I believe you're right, see my earlier post [slashdot.org]. I had a 30GB 75GXP fail after one year, and they sent me a 30GB 60GXP as a replacement.

Note that the 30GB 60GXP only uses one side of one of the platters, since the 60GXP line is 20GB/platter, so in essence I got a crippled 40GB drive.

My 20gig deskstar is fine

[Billly Gates]

I love the IBM hard drives. IBM may make expensive hardware but they are always fine quality. I can't even tell that its on because its so quiet and its been working for over a year without a problem. I guess the newer ones are the ones that are defective. Also be aware that Maxtor uses %100 IBM desktar drives. They just slap a Maxtor label on them.

I've had 75GXP problems too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I've had failures with my two 60GB 75GXP drives as well. Under Windows 2000, I would get read/write errors on them. I would reformat them and the problem went away for a short period of time only to return. I also got timeout problems consistently under Windows 2000 -- this was a wierd problem. When the "timeout" occured, the operating system was no longer able to WRITE to the hard drive, thus causing Windows to basically lock up.

Thinking that the drives might be incompatible with my motherboard, I bought an ATA-100 Promise IDE controller. The same problems continued to occur under Windows 2000.

I finally figured I had buggy drives since I bought them when they first came out. I returned one hard drive to see what would happen and IBM replaced it with a brand new one. The same problems occured. So, thinking the problem might be related to Windows, I moved the hard drives to my Linux box and moved my Linux hard drives (IBM 34GB 34GXP drives) to my Windows box. Windows no longer had a problem. I also installed the ATA-100 Promise controller on my Linux box and hooked the 75GXP drives to it. To my surprise, it's been about 6 months and I've not had a single problem on Linux with the 75GXP drives!! All the problems disappeared when switching to Linux and I've been happy with the drives on my Linux box.

My conclusion is that the drives don't work properly under Windows 2000 for some reason. My Linux box is running with the same hard drives and same IDE controller without a single problem. Go figure.

I have about 10 of these drives, and had 1 problem

[hexx]

When the drived first came out, I purchased a 15G GXP and it did fail a few months later (my first drive failure ever). IBM quickly responded and shipped me a new drive which has had no problems since (more than 1 year).

I use 5 75G drives (purchased in July) in a RAID5 array, and they are all running beautifully.

I use 2 60G drives in a RAID1 array (purchased in August), and both of those are fine as well.

My Windows Box (shutup!) box uses a 45G GXP (purchased in January) and it's running beautifully.

My Linux Box (ok, cheer now) uses a 45G GXP (purchased in March) also, and has no problems ('cept it gets hot, and the 1.33G Athlon fries my bacon).

So in short, when the drives first came out, it appears there were problems (and in fact PCWorld mentioned a plant in Hungary that produced faulty parts). In recent months, however, there do not appear (in my limited experience) to be of poor quality.

In fact, I would say they are exceptionally fast and quiet. I recommend them to friends (I recommend Quantum to my enemies!). And I don't have anything to do with BigBlue.

But more importantly, DRIVES FAIL! If you don't have a backup then you're none too bright. If you do have a backup, don't worry about it. IBM has a 3 year warranty on these suckers!

Actually, no

[bwoodring]

Actually, it's the reverse. WD sells relabled IBM drives. IBM invented the GMR technology that both brands of drives use.

Re:I am sorry to hear about your data loss, but...

[Insideo]

At least CD-R (or even CR-RW) is fairly viable, if a little harder to automate (you can't just tar the files to a device).

Actually, you can. <shameless_plug> Check out cdbackup [cableone.net]. </shameless_plug> I wrote it specifically to allow for this.

Re:Another victim of the "Deathstar"...

[Rob Parkhill]

Yeah, I received a 60GXP drive to replace my dead 75GXP. Problem is, the 75GXP was a 45Gig drive, and the 60GXP they gave me as a replacement is only a 40Gig drive. And they don't seem to care that I get 5Gig less either.

On the up-side, the 60GXP is a bit faster and a lot quiter than the 75GXP. Maybe it will last more than 10 months too...

As seen on anandtech

[rosewood]

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=71 [anandtech.com] This from Anandtech faqs from earlier in the month pretty much covers it all - and covered it a long time ago.

I don't know if this works..

[RainbowSix]

..but I've heard that if you put your hard drive in the freezer for awhile it will be revived long enough to back stuff up until it thaws. Your mileage will vary though, of course.

Re:Drives too fast for the electronics?

[jandrese]

Well, those message are from FreeBSD. I've gone and pulled up the locations for every failure (they've all come from the one disk):

1. Jul 31 08:53:53: ad4s1 bn 76293856; cn 8073 tn 63 sn 37
2. Jul 31 08:53:59: ad4s1 bn 76293856; cn 8073 tn 63 sn 37 -- Fallback to PIO mode
3. Jun 2 03:30:00: ad4s1 bn 76389888; cn 8083 tn 87 sn 57
4. Jun 2 03:30:02: ad4s1 bn 76389904; cn 8083 tn 88 sn 10
5. Jun 2 03:30:02: ad4s1 bn 76389920; cn 8083 tn 88 sn 26
6. Jun 2 03:30:02: ad4s1 bn 76389920; cn 8083 tn 88 sn 26 -- Fallback to PIO mode

Unfortunatly PIO mode is unacceptable, so we always bump the drive back up to UDMA100 mode when it does that. This isn't comprehensive, but it is all of the instances we still have in the logs. Notice that the failure blocks are always near the end of the disk (I think...the math is a little weird at times with all of the funky drive/controller modes).

Re:Heat

[humanasset]

That's an excellent point. Those drives kick out a lot of heat. That along with an Athlon processor can make your chassis very warm.

Something like this:

WIN-7509 hard drive cooler [winotek.com]

or this:

DCD 4002 Cool Drive [coolermaster.com]

may help.

Hit SR's search for more info

[slaker]

I have mod points. I'd rather post...

I'm a fixture over on storagereview.com (you can type it in, I'm not a goatse.cx person). User complaints about the GXP-series have been a literally unceasing topic of discussion since very early this year. The 75gxp is now an assumed unreliable drive - to the point that a single thread about ongoing good experiences with them only garnered a half-dozen replies (one of them mine. I have two 75GB 75gxps that continue to function in a RAID0 array).

I believe SR is now being /.-ed. I can't seem to access it with my crappy modem connection, but few weeks ago, someone typed "75gxp" and "fail" in the search page and got 1500 results. There have also been polls conducted about the GXP's behavior, and there is some evidence suggesting that the more recent 60GXP is just as bad, both in the tech support and General forums. This is a direct contradiction to several posts here stating that the 60GXP has no problem. Other interesting topics, for those willing to visit SR's forums and poke around, include the possibility of class-action litigation (including posts by a soon-to-be-lawyer), statisical analysis of similarities in failed drives - location of manufacture, size, that sort of thing, and many, many tales of RMA woe similar to those of the topic originator.

The 75GXP has been discontinued. If you send in your failed 75GXP today, in all likelihood, you'll get a 60GXP back. 75GB 75GXPs don't have an equivalent size in the newer 60GXP product line. I have no idea what IBM does for those - they were significantly more expensive.

Finally, IBM's DFT utility [ibm.com] for Windows and Linux, if you'd like to test out your own 60- or 75GXP. From time to time it is able to correct misbehaving drives' problems, but just as often, if you're to the point of needing to use it, you might as well call in your RMA.

Re:I don't know if this works..

[TitaniumFox]

Who the hell trolled this post?

I guess no one has ever heard of a temperature sensitive failure? Anyone? Bueller?

Have you ever had a computer crash due to some hardware failure, only to reboot and run for a short time after cooling off? I've had a couple of hard drives over the course of the last 14 years that cracked up like that, only to be revived for a short time if you cooled them down.

I haven't had any problems with my 60 or 75GXP IBM drives, and this may not be helpful in this particular failure method, but this has more validity than it sounds.

TiFox

"the problem isn't the drives, but bad handling"

[Futurepower(tm)]

"I've got to wonder if the problem isn't the drives necessarily, but bad handling..."

Bad handling is DEFINITELY an issue. Many people buy OEM bare drives that come from the manufacturer in bulk packaging. The people who package them and send them to you obviously have no computer knowledge, or thay wouldn't be working in a shipping department. (Computer knowledge means never having to say "Paper or plastic?")

Studies have been done of the acceleration (deceleration) caused by hitting a drive on a hard counter. A small bump of a metal drive on a hard counter can be 70 Gs. When you think about it, it makes sense. The drive is traveling at perhaps 1 foot per second, and then it comes to a complete stop in less than a thousandth of an inch.

The solution is to buy retail-boxed drives. Wait for a sale if the price is a problem.

The damage done by a bump is usually not evident for months until the drive fails. Apparently a drive will get a small mechanical irregularity, and then slowly chew on itself until failure.

By far the most common cause of drive failure is vibration or movement of the case while the drive is running. If you put a tower case on the floor, and the floor moves a little every time someone walks near, expect problems. If you put a case on a concrete floor, but it is often knocked during the day, expect failure. If a computer is on a table that moves a little while you are working, it may not last long. This failure mode is dependent on how much movement about the axis actually happens, of course.

Drives are built to handle a lot of Gs when they are not powered, but when they are running they are very vulnerable.

Inadequate power is also a reason for drive failure. Put a drive on its own power supply connector.

I've had good luck with considerable quantities of Western Digital drives. Good support, also. I've had bad luck with Quantum, Seagate, and Maxtor.

Whew! I didn't realize I knew much about this until I started typing.


Secrecy destroys democracy: What should be the Response to Violence? [hevanet.com]

Re:No problems here

[ncc74656]

I have a feeling that part of the problem is environment related- maybe the 75GXP doesn't handle heat or weak power supplies, or vibrations, or something.

That's one theory that's been put forth in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage [news], especially given how some people like to cheap out on power supplies and such in order to get a faster processor, faster/bigger hard drive, or whatever. If you're trying to run a 75GXP in one of those el-cheapo PC Chips barebones systems, you're asking for trouble. (Hell, if you're running anything that involves components from PC Chips, you're asking for trouble.) Some of the people reporting problems have mentioned having various cheap-ass components in their systems, especially power supplies that don't regulate worth a damn. (What good is a 450W power supply if +5V can sag by half-a-volt or more under full load?)

FWIW, I upgraded my main system earlier this year...replaced a 5.1GB Western Digital with a 45GB 75GXP. Since the processor also got upgraded from a 450-MHz K6-III to a 1.0-GHz Athlon (and an appropriate motherboard and memory), the power supply got beefed up from a 250W Deer to a 330W Enermax (with dual fans and the 4-pin P4 power connector, though that sits unused). I've not had even a hint of trouble from the drive (other than run out of space :-)...added a 100GB Western Digital alongside it to fix that).

I too have had the problem and fixed it

[softwiz]

Stupid me bought a Gateway with this drivein it and it wasn't until my 5th install of Windows 2000 I decided to download the IBM utilities for this drive. It analyzed the drive and told me there was some serious problems that could only be fixed by running their low level format. I did so, repartitioned and formatted, laid down Windows 2000 and haven't had one click sound since. You can get said utility from IBM's website.

Re:I am sorry to hear about your data loss, but...

[shyster]

the computer labs bought about 100 machines all with Zip drives installed, and one by one they all gave the "click" and died. all further disks inserted into the drive would be munged. eventually, someone figured out that something mechanical would break inside the drive if you inserted a standard 3 inch floppy into the drive. Thus why, one by one, they all almost died, because the students would come in and screw em up....

Can you fit a 3 1/2" into a ZIP drive?

Another cause, and perhaps as likely in this particular case (it's pretty obvious pretty quick if you're using the wrong drive) is that some ZIP drives, when they fail, will chew the edges of the ZIP disk. If you try to use that disk in another ZIP drive, it will destroy the head. Add in a desperate user aiming to get data back, rinse and repeat. See some details over at Steve Gibson's grc.com.

Re:Initially not a problem, but not anymore...

[drdink]

RMA directly with IBM after the failure. The drives have internal error logs. Get IBM's Disk Fitness Test software over at http://www.storage.ibm.com/ and it'll give you a TRC code that you can use to RMA with. Do it after you hear the clicking noise.

IBM Employee says "IBM Drives are BAD NEWS"!

[Anonymous Coward]

Being an IBM employee (in software development, not hardware, so please direct your flames elsewhere), I can vouch for the bad disk hardware that IBM has been putting out lately.

Not only are there batches of DeskStar 60GXP and 75GXPs EIDE drives that are DOA or failing before 10,000 hours, but the low-end SCSI drives used in NetFinity and RS/6000 (oops, xSeries and pSeries) machines are prone to similar fates.

Over the past 5 months, one of my development machines with over 100 of these SCSI drives (RAID-0, now RAID-5 just to minimize my hassles) consistently throws one or two bad disks a week!

I would strongly recommend staying away from IBM for standard EIDE and SCSI disks (laptop and SSA disks seem to be fine) until they can get their manufacturing problems ironed out.

IBM admits problems

[youngec]

Check out this link on IBM's website.

Looks like there are firmware updates to -prevent- the problem, but if you've ran the drive too hard for too long, it may be too late.

http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-39082.html

Re:"the problem isn't the drives, but bad handling

[DarkEdgeX]

It's interesting to me that you have good luck with Western Digital drives, and bad luck with Maxtor drives, when Maxtor is the one who makes the drives Western Digital distributes (read: slap a new label on them, and you're done with WD's involvement). Atleast that's what I read sometime back (and naturally I can't find the place I read that, so take this information with a BIG helping of salt).

Also, about Maxtor, I've had nothing but good luck with their drives (as well as WD's, as you noted too), and bad luck with Seagate drives (never tried Quantum, so I can't say one way or the other). The one thing I like about Maxtor is their RMA/return/replacement policy-- you give them a valid credit card number, they put a hold on your account for the price of the drive you're supposedly returning, and they immediatly ship out a replacement drive the next day (before you've even shipped back your defective unit). You have 30 days (I believe) to return the drive before they ding your credit card for the price of the drive.

About the concerns regarding proper handling, you're right about OEM drives, but this guy returned his drive 2 or 3 times, and you'd think the guys running tech support/RMA would have some training on how to handle the drive (if indeed that's the reason the drives are failing). Of course, it could have been any of the other (correct) causes of failure you listed (PC on floor, lots of walking; PC on concrete, tips over or is jarred alot; etc).

If someone can shed some light on the manufacturing processes of Maxtor and WD HDD's, I'd be thankful for the enlightenment though-- I'd hate to be seen as talking out of my ass.

Whats happening, for me at least. Possible solu...

[Ziviyr]

This may be repeated elsewhere, but so far I haven't seen this mentioned.

My story involves a pair of DTLA307030 30G drives.

I'd been using them for a few months and then I noted an occasional unusually loud sound that I'll call a "bad block sound". Initially having experience rooted in old SCSI drives I didn't understand the cause, and shrugged it off (somewhate moronically I'm gathering) as a thermal recalibration. :-)

A month or so later that freak sound returned with read errors. So I called up IBM (got the wrong support number of course, but the person was still quite helpful). Suggested I go get the drive analysis/repair tool from their site http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.ht m (thanks for the broken URL slashdot...). I do that and scan the disk, well duh, "Fail code x70 - Defective Device". But what the phrack does that mean?? The drive is still working beyond the nasty bad block(s).

The software then offered to try to repair it by erasing the disk. After a long story of backing up the drive data/OS, yadda I do it. And the drive is magically new and stuff, no errors.

After more research it seems theres a problem that due to the near 2 megabytes of cache on the drive when the crazy fast auto-powerdowning systems of today shutdown they don't necessarily give the drive enough time to flush its cached writes to disk before the power dies or the reset signal hits it. Henced a fudged write.

Another poster mentioned a place where firmware updates can be found, http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-39082.html.

I haven't tried it myself yet and the site doesn't state what it specifically does though.

Re:Use drive drawers that have 2 fans.

[baptiste]

The best solution may be to use those removeable drive drawers that have 2 fans.

I do this with every new system I build - you can get nice IDE trays for like $40 with dual fans.

Both my main servers have Deskstar RAIDs [slashdot.org] and ALL are in trays with dual fans 300W PS or better. Still having troubles with them.

I'll never buy Deskstars again - but the Ultrastars have been great.