IBM Hard drives, signs of failure? (1 Viewer)

[Scott L]

I know that the IBM HDs have had failure problems which is one of the reason they might stop making them entirely. I have a 60GXP model, 20gig, 72000 ata/100. HDtach shows it's much faster than my Maxtor of the same specs/capacity and I noticed the performance increase after I first switched. But now the drive is making a high-pitched squealing noise at idle. When it's working it seems to go on and off which tells me it's the IBM.

Is this a sign of it failing and should I back all my stuff onto the Maxtor for safety? I'm thinking about getting a 40gig WD, I've heard good things about them recently. Will IBM reimburse me in anyway or offer to trade in for a working drive?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Scott "E"]

Is this a sign of it failing and should I back all my stuff onto the Maxtor for safety?

Unfortunately, Scott, your drive is showing the signs of failure and yes, backup your data.

Depending on how old the drive is you should be able to call IBM and get a RMA# for a new drive. You'll have to ship them the drive first, but you will usually see the new drive 7 days after they receive the old one.

It's really too bad IBM encountered these problems with their hard drives, because as you stated, they are very fast.

 

[Daniel Alan]

Unfortunately the model of IBM HDD you have is well known for its reliability problems. However the newer IBM drives 120GXP and better are completely void of reliability defects, and still out perform most every other IDE HDD (execept western digital SE drives) and the new ones can have 8megs of cache to make them as fast as the WDs.
the IBM HDD branch has been sold by the way, but they still have the research division, which is FAR and away the best in the biz
Anyway, you need to backup immidiatly and contact IBM, they are pretty good about dealing with claims for the 60GXP, they're had alot of practice

 

[Julio De Luis]

If you want to check whether your hard drive is about to die on you, check out the following website
Drive noises
Just hearing the noises will scare the crap out of you. And as you can see, it is an IBM support website.

 

[JohanK]

Download and run the IBM DFT utility to check out the drive. If ya have to RMA, it is rather simple with IBM.