40 GB IBM's Read!

[Golga]

ive had nothing but trouble with every quantum drive ive aquired.
im currently running IBM and a Maxtor ATA 133, the IBM got bad sectors the first day i got it.
Ive had many Maxtor hard drives over the years and ive found them to be the most reliable, IBM and Western Digital are both spat out from the same factory, the drives look identical.

 

[REP]

Re IBM 40 GIG

I've been running two IBM 40 G disks (AVVA07 - 7200 rpm) for almost a year with no problems at all. Although each disk has its own little cooler fan (the sort they now put in front of removable disk "carriers/containers") these disks - made in Hungary - generate much less heat than other disks I've had.

I have had a lot of trouble with disks produced in the Far East - Seagate (Singapore -- bad sectors galore from the very outset; took two back to the shop) and IBM (Thailand -- weird data errors).

In my opinion the IBM disks I have are definitely faster (and quieter!) than the Seagates but I only buy IBMs produced in Hungary (as opposed to Thailand etc.)

 

[ChickenMan]

I have an IBM 60gig 7200rpm ATA100 drive. Over 12months old and has been running almost 24hr & 7 days /week without a flicker. No extra fans and hard up againt 3 1/2" floppy. I've had 20gig, 30gig & 40gig IBM drives for excessive of 12months each and never had one die. In fact I've never had ANY HD die on me ever and they all run continous and working while encoding movies.

Just bought a Seagate 80 gig 7200 ATA100 drive today for data storage, it certainly runs hotter than the 40gig Seagate it replaced (didnt die, just moved to another PC). Cost AU$220 (or US$110)

 

[REP]

Re IBM 40 GB

I didn't know about the IBM utilities mentioned by LTR12101B but now I've downloaded them I'm very glad to have them. After working non stop for 15 hours my two IC35L040AVER07-0 disks showed a temperature of 41 degrees (the advice was to keep them between 10 and 60 degrees). I also did the thorough disk fitness test and everything was O.K.

Of course only time and statistics will tell. I notice that IBM claim that most people complaining about their products are barking up the wrong tree, but it would be interesting to have some statistics about individual IBM plants (Thailand or Hungary for instance):

"Incorrect diagnosis of the hard drive is expensive for the OEM system manufacturer, but incorrect diagnosis is discovered only when the returned hard drive is tested and verified as No Defect Found (NDF). Unfortunately, the drive replacement cost has already been incurred, yet the true system problem might still be uncorrected.

Many IBM OEM customers' telephone support centers receive problem calls within 30 days of shipment from the owners of as many as one to two percent of the new systems shipped. A significant number of these calls involve problems that potentially result in unnecessary hard drive replacements, so up to one percent of hard drives might potentially be returned within 30 days of shipment. It has been the experience of IBM, however, that approximately 80 percent of these returns are NDF. Many of the remaining 20 percent are found to have been damaged by the end user but replaced at the system OEM's expense.

In addition to the cost, hard drive replacement is traumatic and disruptive for end users and therefore should be viewed as the repair of last resort. If the hard drive is replaced but is not defective, the end user has experienced a disruption. Yet the underlying problem could still recur. According to a survey by PC Magazine¹, customer satisfaction with accurate repair is a key indicator in repeat buying. Based on 17,000 responses, repeat buying correlated more closely with repair satisfaction than with percent of systems needing repair."