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Thoughts on the IBM 13G Deskstar? 44

Posted by Cliff from the request-for-comments dept.
darkangel asks: "My hdd finally died today. I'd been having all sorts of trouble with it for quite some time. It was a Seagate 4.3 gig EIDE. So I'm going to get a new one, hopefully one that is more reliable. My first choice is a 13gig IBM Deskstar. Does anyone have one of these? How reliable are they? Any comments would really be appreciated. Please email me! "
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Thoughts on the IBM 13G Deskstar? More

Thoughts on the IBM 13G Deskstar?

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  • I've had WD drives die on me. Besides, WD seems to be struggling these days.

    Quantum stuff varies in quality from the unusable (e.g. Bigfoot) through the decent (e.g. fireball; I have several at home) to the "I could never afford that". ;)

    I've heard very good things about IBM, though.
    --

  • Well knowing that the most you can expect out of a hard drive is 18 months of continuous operation and that hard drives go obsolete after 6 months, you're better off getting a 27 gig Maxtor for $200, wearing it into the ground, and next year getting a 50 gig Maxtor at twice the speed for $100, wearing it in the ground, and then if getting a 100 gig for $50. Today's hard drives all get the same performance: 15megs/sec no matter what the bus interface is. Next year's hard drives will get 30megs/sec.
  • ... it keeps a system live in the event of a drive failure... but if you have a flood or lightning strikes the pole outside the building... you're fucked.

    backup means a copy offsite and safe. Mirroring is very nice but not a good idea for a backup strategy.
  • Oh sure, home users are going to back up their $200 27GB IDE hard drive on 9GB DATs and then lock them in a safe box across the state line.

    you're missing the point. With that much storage, it's easy to accumulate a LOT of data that's important/hard to get.
  • I've had all kinds of drives. Seagate, Maxtor, IBM, WD, Fujitsu, Quantum...

    They're all pretty decent for a desktop drive. Personally I reccommend Seagate for SCSI (got a pair of their 10000 RPM drives in RAID1 and they scream) or WD.

    I've had a few WD's die on me (probably past their MTBF) but WD has been nothing but the best in customer service. One died on me a day after warranty and they extended the warranty on a dead drive 2 weeks so I could get it shipped to them for replacement. In my home computer I've got 3 WDs now and an HP writer. Kinda full there :-)

    One thing I've noticed about the recent trend in HUGE CHEAP drives... Where's the backup strategy? Some friends of mine recently bought the 27G (I think) Maxtors... 27G is nice, don't get me wrong, but the home user isn't exactly the type of user to buy a backup strategy capable of handling that much data... when it *does* go south, they're gonna be plenty pissed.

    I hope you haven't forgotten a backup strategy.

    Andrew
  • Their drives are *quiet*. I have three with scsi interfaces and two with ide. None make enough noise to hear activity unless you put your ear right next to the box. None have failed and two of the scsi drives are 3+ years old.

    A couple of weeks ago I went and bought a 17G with ide for $170 for the sole purpose of storing mp3s. After 275 tracks of cdparanoia and lame it is 9% full...
  • I'm using an IBM Thinkpad right now which has reasonable RAM and CPU, but lousy IO. I was thinking of supplementing it with an external SCSI drive, or an internal SCSI drive in an enclosure.

    Is there any specific reason to go for external SCSI? I'm more interested in minimizing seek times than I am in huge storage, so I'm currently leaning to the IBM Deskstar 9LX, but I've seen cool things like the PocketHammer which might give an edge.
  • On a cheap celeron board of mine which had SCSI until recently, I tried to install an IDE drive. I started with a 17 gig Seagate. I managed to install Linux with no hitches (other than it took several tries to make it boot - it's always a wrestle with these big drives). This system's BIOS correctly detects the size of the drive, but, if I have the BIOS detect it and then boot with a Debian rescue disk to do an install, fdisk can only see 8.someodd gigs. So the solution which worked on another system, which I also used on this one, is to tell the BIOS there is no primary hard drive, and let Linux detect it on its own; then fdisk sees the whole thing and I can partition it. After Linux is installed, I have to set the BIOS back to auto-detect in order to be able to boot off the hard drive, but the BIOS then detects it as being in LBA mode, and Linux boots just fine. On my main system I haver no problems at all doing it this way. I used a 10 meg partition for /boot near the beginning of the drive (right after a little DOS partition in case I need some occasional DOS tool like the 3c509 setup utility for instance) and I put my kernels in /boot. swap is at the end of the drive, and all the space in the middle is the root partition. Well, the system boots and runs fine, but as it warms up, it gets an increasing number of errors like this:

    hda: status timeout: status=0x80 { Busy }
    hda: drive not ready for command
    ide0: reset: success

    Eventually the time spent "not ready" gets to be minutes at a time and the system becomes useless; also I hear some extreme seek noises like it's bumping its heads against the case or something. But I don't know if IDE drives can actually do that if they're given out-of-range sector commands or whatever. The drive is not overheating; the case has a serious fan blowing air right on it and the drive is only a tiny bit warmer than room temperature. Anyway after a few days of this abuse (over several weeks - I had the system powered off a lot due to not being able to solve this problem) the Seagate died; the BIOS wouldn't detect it anymore on boot. Since it was nearly new I returned it and got an IBM 20 gig drive instead. But I'm getting the same errors and noises. I have tried a 2.0.36 kernel, 2.2.13, and 2.3.24 (or was it 34? the latest as of a couple weeks ago anyway). The 2.3 series kernel actually detected the controller properly; the others said it was an unknown controller or something like that but it worked about the same regardless of which kernel. I'm afraid to keep trying to use it because I think the problem caused some kind of physical damage to the Seagate drive.

    Any clues?
  • I have a 10G WD and a 25G IBM and would recommend both to anyone. The WD is 5400rpm and the IBM is 7200rpm, so there is a bit of a speed difference, but I've had the WD much longer (a rather reliable drive, it is) than the IBM, but I've had good luck with IBM drives before, so I figure I'll have it a while too. Stay away from Seagate unless its SCSI and dont even bother with Quantum or Maxtor. The WD or IBM drives might cost you $20 or $30 more than the same size Quantum or Maxor, but that small difference is well made up by the speed and reliability of both of these drives.
  • Then get a SCSI disk. I'd never trust an IDE for anything mission critical. I have SCSI disks that are over 13 years old and still work fine and do not have a grown defect list. For decent storage space and good reliability I'd recommend a Seagate 23GB or 47GB full height 5.25" drive. You really can't beat 5.25" SCSIs in terms of reliability. Sure they're expensive, but what do you want? A drive that lasts 2 years or one that lasts for 10?
  • Interesting. I've got 2 Quantum Bigfoot drives that have been running 24/7 for over 2 years now, while my SCSI Quantum Fireball just upped and died after 18 months. Haven't peeled it to make sure but it sure sounded like it went farming. IIRC the bigfeet were supposed to be reliable rather than fast.

    Seagates that I've owned have never impressed me, IDE and MFM, no SCSI yet. I've avoided 'em since my 545Mb IDE started squealing 5 days after I got it.

    Maxtor drives have always worked well for me, I prefer them when I can get 'em. I've got a pair of 120Mb IDE's that have been running 8 hours a day on average since I got 'em, never had the first problem with 'em.
  • i've picked up three deskstars in the past year (two 10.1 GB 5400 rpm drives and a 14.4 GB 7200 rpm one). so far they haven't given me any probs and give good performance (12-15 MB/sec). i think the 13 GB one will be even faster since it's newer and has higher density platters.

    the only drive make i've personally had problems with is western digital. i had a 2.1 GB drive from them that was flaky from day 1 and several friends and coworkers have had WD drives go south on them. even recently they had a bad batch of drives that had to be recalled.

    every drive maker has a non-zero failure rate, though, so it's a matter of how low it is and how well they'll treat you if something goes wrong. in my experience and from what i've read elsewhere, IBM is as good or better than anyone else in both regards.

    tim
  • I've replaced many a dud Bigfoot during my time in hardware repairs, and the one I owned carked it recently as well.

    I bought myself a 13gb Fireball KA recently though, and I love it. I'm only running it on an ATA33 controller, but it's pushing 20mb/sec on writes in bonnie. hdparm -t gives similar results. It made a BIG performance improvement over my old 5400RPM Seagate. I don't notice it swapping now. Definitely recommended from this corner.
  • actaully CD-Rs really aren't "for ever" I've already had two fail... all I can say is keep them away from halogen lamps and sun light, even in the jewel case. I'd expect though that they'll last longer than you care about the data backed up on them.

    to be fair these were very cheap CDRs for their time, (at 7.50 each back in the day) and they spent any time out of the drive in a verticle rack on my desk (lit by a halogen overhead lamp).
  • re the segates: yup, their SCSI is GOOD, I've a pair of 9GB Ultra2s in this box, good and fast, very stable... the IDE stuff they sell is second rate crap; I've had more failures with that stuff than I can count... to the point of actively advising people away from it.

    as for WD, they buy platters from IBM (at least for "enterprise storage") infact they just built a plant here in Rochester a block away from IBM's platter manufacturing facility.

    The deskstars are just incredible... but seem to me to be a bit hard to get ahold of... and expensive when you can. I would have prefered them to the Barracudas I put in my last machine, but I couldn't get any.
  • Random personal experience:

    I recently had my computer overheat (closed up office on a summer day combined with dual 350's and not the greatest internal cooling). I had two hard drives in it at the time: a 3GB IBM that came with my computer's father (I did a brain upgrade) and a 7GB Maxtor. The maxtor had the better cooling of the two and the IBM was sandwiched between a cdr and a tape drive in a 3.25 bay. After rebooting from the crash the IBM was still kicking and good to go. The maxtor was fried (all it did was make a rather pathetic whining noise). Needless to say when I went out and bought a new HD I got an IBM (13.5GB 7200rpm IDE for around $140 w/ shipping and such). If maxtors are really just re-branded IBMs now then good for maxtor for finally selling good stuff. Me I'm sticking to what I have had good experences with and that is IBM.

    --chris
  • With the price of drives these days, it seems like mirroring is a viable strategy for backups. Obviously it won't work for incremental backups though.
  • Oh sure, home users are going to back up their $200 27GB IDE hard drive on 9GB DATs and then lock them in a safe box across the state line.
  • This is a ludicrously specific question, IMHO.

    Anyway, haven't used that drive, but I've used plenty of IBM drives, with no real problems. Been happy.

    As pointed out, don't forget a backup strategy.
  • Im not sure what crack he smokes, I dont deal to him and we dont party together.

    When I first heard his explanation, I didnt believe him. I thought that the inertia of the spinning drive would keep it moving fast enough to provide the lift needed for the head to get to the landing zone. Im still not convinced, but he has seen the inside of more drives than I have.

    I happen to have a head assembly from a WD drive in my desk drawer. Yes the arms are metal, however they do have a bit of flex to them. I have an old 100 meg drive that I may take apart later today just to see the platters spin up with the cover open. Doubt Ill see much but it should be fun. I always take stuff apart when it breaks, and have seen the innards to some interesting electronics.

    Here is a reference from storagereview.com, I think that you might be interested in their explanation:

    http://www.storagereview.com/guide/guide_actuato r_arms.html

    Here are a couple of choice bits quoted from their site:

    When the platters are not spinning, the heads rest on the surface. When the platters spin up, the heads rub along the surface of the platters until sufficient speed is gained for them to "lift off" and ride on their cushion of air. When the drive is spun down, the process is repeated in reverse. In each case, for a period of time the heads make contact with the surface of the disk--while in motion, in fact.

    That pretty much supports the assertion that the heads are flying over the surface of the disk. Furthermore, it counters the claim that simply touching the platter while it is in motion will rip the head off of the mounting arm.

    Of course they go on to say:
    ...When the power is shut off, the electromagnetic force from the voice coil abates, and the spring yanks the heads to the landing zone before the platters can spin down. Other disks use a different mechanical or electronic scheme to achieve the same goal. This means that modern hard disks will automatically park their heads--even in the event of a power failure--and no utilities are required.

    Read the entire article to get the overall context. Very informative.

    So, it appears that power failures dont matter nearly as much as he thought they did. In the past perhaps they caused some problems, and he is still operating based on older knowledge. That doesnt surprise me because he deals mainly with older drives.

    -BW



  • Earlier this year, I talked with a data recovery tech about what kinds of drives he likes the best. Surprisingly he didnt see a big difference between major manufacturers. Overall he had four pieces of advice:

    1. Stay away from drives made in Turkey. He noticed that on average Turkish made drives had higher rates of failure.

    2. Dont trust a drive for longer than 18 months for critical data. Sure, I still have 6 year old drives spinning merrily away. However he said that the bathtub shaped failure curve starts ramping up at that point. Supposedly all of the tech at the shop swap out their old drives every 18 months.

    3. Get SCSI if you can afford it. The construction tends to be a bit better on the higher end drives.

    4. Use a UPS. Apparently sudden power failures can cause the head to tap the platters because they lose the lift provided by the rapidly rotating surface. Not good for the tapped sector, and can lead to catastrophe.

    In terms of brands, he said that IBM was making some pretty nice drives. On the other hand, he has seen so many failures from every brand on the market that he believes that all hardware sucks. I guess its like determining which flavor of Windows is the best. After you work on each of them for a while, NT seems better than the others but it still annoys the hell out of you.

    Personally, I like IBM drives and would go for it. Ive done tech support for hundreds of boxen and havent had too many problems with IBM drives. Of course YMMV.

    -BW
  • I used to work for Dell's laptop line of business.

    Laptop drive reliability is a big deal, and by far the most expensive problem to deal with in the field. The opinion of Dell's engineers on this topic was that IBM is in a class by themselves. (This would be the TravelStar 2.5" series rather than the more ordinary destop DeskStar 3.5" drives.)

    The peripherals team spent a lot of effort to qualify even one vendor (Fujitsu) that was able to get their drive durability and reliability up in the same neighborhood as IBM's. Even then, the opinion of those doing the testing was that although the Fujitsus (after having them make many modifications) were acceptable, they still were'nt as good as the IBMs.

    This datapoint is about a year and a half old now, but many of the technologies are the same in both series of drives, and in fact, we may one day see new technology in laptop drives first because that market is less cost-sensitive.

    (FWIW, although hard disks died routinely in laptops a few years ago, the disk is now one of the most rugged components of the machine, sometimes able to take more abuse (G's) than the screen or PWB. Operating G's are higher now than non-operating G's were a few years ago.)
  • www.storagereview.com [storagereview.com] - I consider the website the best site for hard drive performance info and reviews, so far they have reviewed 81 hard drives. They also provide info about the latest hard drive, a forum for people with question, and look into hard drive technologies such as the effect of buffer size on hard drive performance. (and like any good website) Storage Review is frequently updated...

    As for my personal experiences, my IBM 10.1 GB hard drive was dying and experience random shutdowns. I was able to pull my data off and restore from backups. IBM tech support was really helpful and I got a replacement within two weeks (it's a 14.4 GB) *grin*


    _______________________________________________
    There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
  • I just thought I'd chime in coz this post reminded me of the twin WD Caviar A340s in my old 486: been running intermittently for ~6 yrs. At some point the first drive's power plug got broken (my bad). Soldered power supply wiring directly to its board and insulated them with blue-tac. Still working, no bad sectors. And did I mention that this box was shipped cross-country *3* times?
  • Another selling point for these drives is that you can refer conversationally to your "Deathstar"
  • In regards to silent operation.. I have a Fujitsu M2934QAU that sounds much like an unlubricated jet taking off when it spins up. Drives works fine, though.
  • I don't know a whole lot about hardware but I bought a 27.2 gig Maxtor a while back that runs great! It is pretty quick for an EIDE. It is still only a 5400 rpm drive, but for $240 I figured you could not beat the price. I have two disks and both of them are Maxtors. The other one that I have is a 11.9 gig. They are both nice drives but the 27.2 is substantially faster because of the ATA/66 interface.
  • ibm and maxtor manufacture the same harddrive. I have a maxtor sitting in my computer that was made by IBM. i like maxtor though their support is great. A while ago I had bad sectors on my maxtor harddrive. I called maxtor and had a new one ship to me within a few days and then I sent the bad one back.
  • Apparently sudden power failures can cause the head to tap the platters because they lose the lift provided by the rapidly rotating surface.

    Your tech told you that? What kind of crack does he smoke? AFAIK, (from opening my dead seagateS) a head is mounted on a long metal arm. it's not getting lift from shit. Now in a zip disk this makes sense because as the speed drops the disk gets floppy, and this is why they tell you not to turn the machine off with a disk in a zip drive.

    but i'd talk to your tech buddy again on point #4. Not that UPSs are bad, but still, if a head tapped the platter, that'd be a PHYSICAL CRASH, and most likely the head would get ripped off its mounting arm.

    see my later post for my experiences with drives (many years worth)

  • Yep they do.

    OK, my experiences...

    • seagate 350 mb - died after about 4 years of not steady usage, had a physical head crash - the head managed to get itself dug into the clearcoat on the disk surface and it tore a bit of a nick in the platter... plus the head was mostly ripped off the mounting arm.
    • IBM 540 MB to replace seagate - still working to this day.
    • IBM deskstar 22gxp 22gig (7200rpm, ata66) - Works great, had it about 3 months now, no problems, great speed.. but could be bigger, i've filled it.
    • IBM deskstar 22gxp 27.3 gig - 7200 rpm, ata66 - Just got this puppie, but went in fine and works fine, even after i accidentally bumped (a little not soft) it against another drive in the box!
    • i've also used about 4 different WD drives. can't say they're the best, but they're better than seagate disks. now i've heard seagate is great for SCSI, but i don't have SCSI so i haven't tried them.
    I'd say your best bet is IBM. Big Blue seems to know what they're doing these days, at least with disks. while you're at it, order me one of their 50 gig disks too, my 27.3 is filling at the moment...

  • Well... I suppose I mostly agree with that.

    Here're my experiences:

    Western Digital

    • SCSI: They only just started offering SCSI drives. Not my idea of total reliability.
    • EIDE: They usually last for a year or two and then die. Don't count on the drive to last very long, though sometimes they will surprise you with a very long life.

    Maxtor

    • EIDE: Not too fast, but they are more reliable than Western Digital. The newer Maxtors might be faster, but they've always been rather sluggish compared to WD in the past.

    Seagate

    • SCSI: Very, very reliable, except for the first generation drives, which sometimes overheat or suffer other minor problems. They usually last a decade.
    • EIDE: Avoid, avoid, avoid. Do not use.

    Quantum

    • SCSI: I just bought an Atlas 10K. Damn, it's awesome. Get one!
    • EIDE: Inexpensive, fast, innovative. Sometimes the reliability is called into question, but it seems no worse than WD.

    IBM

    • Can't say that I've ever owned one, but all recent reviews have been positive.
    Fujitsu
    • A dealer that I used to know swore by these drives, claiming they were the #1 company in reliability. I never used one.

    Others

    • I wouldn't mess with them. Old Micropolis SCSI drives might be okay, though.
  • okay now Im freaked man...
    No wait, now that im a little saner I realise its not as it seems :) I actually have a quantum 4.3 gigger, and the new IBM disk I just bought is in fact 14 gigs I think... oh and my 4.3 gig hasnt crashed (yet) -- monthly incremental backups put all that spare storage space to good use!

    Well...its still a pretty similar setup! It freaked me out at first...I thought it was a sign :)

    I bet itll be less than a couple of years before Im like, shit me where did 13gigs go? Because right now I can assure you that when I got my 4gig I was like, aaaaah this will never run out! EVER!! And then it was as if it magically filled up with nothing....and that nothing came back afetr formatting too :) Weird....is it me or is bleeding edge software getting far too bloated thses days? 4 gigs is enough to store like every book in the state library! AH well...

    I have to say Im very happy with my new IBM 14 gig baby...I clocked her at over 15 seconds to spin down after power off. ooooohhh baby you gotta love that sound!

  • Well, while we're sharing hard drive stories, I figured I'd jump in.

    On the office front, I've had a Maxtor IDE drive that began making funny noises after a while, though it never died. I had a Seagate IDE drive that ended up dying, due to "electrical failure", according to the hard drive recovery experts. Another Seagate drive died in a laptop, making bizarre grinding noises. And of course, we've probably all got a story of a Quantum drive going belly up.

    Talking to other techs, I've heard mostly more bad reports about Quantum.

    I got a Maxtor UDMA/66 17 GB drive (oddly, they were selling their 13GB drive for *exactly* the same price) for my home computer. While it works, my BIOS was apparently outdated, and the only way I could get the BIOS to recognize drives greater than 13 GB or so was to use Maxtor's MaxBlast utility. This actually caused me no end to headaches when I tried to install linux -- fdisk was quite unhappy trying to parse Maxtor's custom partition tables, and messed them all up.

    Finally, my most recent drive was a 13GB IBM, and it has served me well (so far, knock on wood). With my Maxtor 17 gigger, that's a whopping 30 gigs of hard drive space. I can't imagine needing that much for my home computer. ;)



    - Rodionpunk
  • I've been using Seagate hard drives all my life. Prior to last Christmas, I had four of them, I thought they were great, then I decided to put a lot more space in my 486 Linux server. I decided on an IBM 10GB Deskstar for performance reasons. The IBM Deskstars are much quieter and cooler than the Seagates. I was always attempted to fry an egg on a Seagate Medalist. I wouldn't be able to use an IBM Deskstar as a hand warmer it's so cool.

    Since then I've recommended IBM Deskstars to everyone buying components. I've never had any problems and they are very fast drives. Also, I get them from www.tjt.com. They have very low prices and shipping and the people there are smart and friendly.
  • My experience is the IBM and WD Hard drives are the best. The others (Seagate, Quantum) have died on me or have had slow access times.

    Just my $((sqrt(9)-1)(1/100))

    Mark "Erus" Duell
  • I recently acqurired an IBM 14gig 7200rpm EIDE/33 Drive. I thought to buy IBM because my friend's 2.5gb IBM was blazing fast when he got it in 1996. Well, so is the IBM 14gig, I got it for ~$135 with shipping, which seemed like a good deal when we got it. I would go for a 7200rpm Segate,IBM, or Maxtor. I personally don't like western digital, but some people do. Be sure to get a 7200rpm drive though, its much more fast(very noticeably) than my 7gb Maxtor 5400rpm. Go with more rpm over more gigs and you'll be happy you did. I hope this helps. E-Mail me if you want any more advice.
  • I have an 8 GB IBM Deskstar sitting on my shelf right now. It makes a really good paperweight. :) A few months ago it started making all these really unhealthy grinding noises and later that day crapped out. The BIOS won't even detect it. The plus side to this story? THat was my windows drive, and I havn't installed Windows since. :)
  • but the home user isn't exactly the type of user to buy a backup strategy capable of handling that much data...

    As a home user, I have found incremental backups to CD-R to be very cheap and effective. Plus, CD-Rs stick around forever, so they're good for archival purposes too. I may not be the "average" home user, but backup onto CD-R is a viable option for most home users. On a side note, I have found Maxtor's DiamondMax HD's to be excellent, cheap storage solutions. I have a pair of 20.0 GB DiamondMaxen in a striped RAID array, and they absolutely fly. Not as good as the very best SCSI options, but the very best SCSI options are an order of magnitude more expensive.

  • I bought last week an IBM 13Gb DJNA371350 and it was DOA. A bad sector 0. I could access data but it didn't boot after a format /s. However my dealer replaced it without questions. I also own a IBM 22Gb DJNA372200 and it is excellent!

    Regarding mirroring, it is true that now that prices are low, it make sense. However, real tape back-up should never be neglected. I have a Seagate Hornet 20Gb to do **daily** incremental back-up. I always been a fan of Travan tape. They are cheap and reliable, I've been using them since 1993 and they saved my life quite often (Ever had a bad sector exactly where your Ph.D. thesis is?). Unfortunatelly, they're also quite noisy but I do back-up at night so nobody is annoyed by the noise. For my critical files I also do regular back-up on CD. That way I can sleep at night without worrying about the safety of my data.

    Just my 2 cents...

    Charles

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