Maxtor/IBM?

Originally posted by SnookBooger
...the GXP 120 is a new design and is a top-notch HD.
i believe this. they're faster than any maxtors and second only to wd's 8mb drives, which are expensive. most, if not all reliability problems should be sorted out by now... but the whole 8 hours a day thing might be true and would be most unfortunate and cost them a lot of faithful customers.
 
I agree that it is entirely possible IBM put out a bad batch of one specific model and it is wrong to condem the entire Hd line including current models. It is no joke when it comes to the webmasters quote. In fact IBM offered to replace the drives with REFURBISHED units. ANY company that puts out crap and does not offer to replace with NEW units should be avoided. Again as for WD and Maxtor there warranty states that it is there option to replace or repair(refurbs), but in my shop they have always replaced with new product during the warranty period. In fact a number of clients have recieved larger or faster drives as replacement during warranty period. Still want IBM? If you have problems with a 4 month old drive do you want it replaced with a refurbed 12 month old drive? In Canada IBM requires there HD's to be returned to the USA for warranty(at least SCSI models). If they gave a crap they could have a Canadian office to ship to and then they could ship to the USA and the customer would never know.Why buy from IBM with no Canadian warranty presence? Does anyone else have any first hand, positve warranty experience from any company that makes HD's?.
 
The IBM 120GXP Revisited

The revelation that IBM’s 120GXP line of drives was only rated for 333 hours of usage per month kicked off a storm of controversy and discussion both here at VH and at other websites as well. With little actual data to go on, however, speculation has run rampant and official response has been scarce. VH launched its own investigation into the issue with the goal of examining IBM’s claims regarding the 120GXP’s optimum usage, whether such claims were sufficiently documented, and how consumers may wish to respond to the situation. We’ve organized this article in a question-and-answer format to allow for simpler organization and easier reading, with the questions themselves designed to walk a reader through the situation.

IBM, unfortunately, would not provide additional information or official comment on the 120GXP situation, despite repeated phone calls and requests for data.

Is there a reliability problem with IBM hard drives?

This isn’t an easy question to answer, especially with IBM withholding comment. While large numbers of readers responded to the questions I posed regarding drive reliability, their emails present very different pictures. Some of you swear by IBM drives and their reliability, while listing many of the Seagate, Maxtor, or WD drives you’ve seen fail in both a corporate and a consumer setting, while other readers had horror stories of seeing IBM drive after IBM drive bite the dust.

Based on the emails and feedback we received from earlier stories, however, the IBM drives seem to have one distinguishing characteristic—they fail faster. Most of the emails and commentary we received indicated drives that survived only a few months past their purchase date. My own personal experience mirrors this—of the three 75GXP drives I’ve replaced for customers, two of them were less than a year old, with the third being just shy of eighteen months.

If you take into account the fact that IBM is currently facing a lawsuit alleging that the 75GXP line is defective, it seems fairly clear that, at the least, IBM’s 75GXP line is suffering from problems. How widespread the problems are, which drive models they affect, and what IBM is doing to fix them, however, is not clear. It’s been suggested that all of the defective drives have shipped from a certain factory, but Big Blue has done nothing to confirm or deny this, or even acknowledged that a problem exists.

How does the 333 hour limit fit into the current situation, and what does the limit mean?

Last week, IBM dropped a bombshell on the hard drive community when Storage Review published a conversation between IBM and “a long time SR participant.” The conversation stated that these drives were unsuited for any type of serious server role and should not be used as such.

To some, this is simply IBM covering the bases of liability by stating the drives should only be used eight hours a day, but means nothing else. Others of you have expressed grave concern that the newly-emphasized 333 hour limitation is, in fact, a tacit admission by IBM of problems with the 120, 75, and 60 GXP drives.

While there are arguments to be made for both sides, the bulk of the evidence points to the latter rather than the former. Several websites (including Tweaktown) have published articles indicating that the 75 (and possibly even the 60 GXP) drives are failing because of excess heat. Certainly it’s true that using the drive less would be one way of keeping it cooler over its total life, allowing for greater reliability.

Also of note is that IBM has never emphasized this 333 hour-per-month usage rate before on any of its products. While the specification exists in the technical literature for the 120, 75, and 60 GXP drives, websites reviewing these drives for months have recommended them for placement in low-end servers. IBM’s own press releases have targeted the drives for these areas as well. It’s extremely odd that a company would both encourage websites to review its drives in a low-end server environment, target them into that market, and then suddenly pull an about-face and claim the drives should not be used in such arenas.

One argument used to support the idea that the 333 hours-per-month is merely a liability trick is that companies like VIA ship their C3 processors with a heatsink and fan, yet publicly demonstrate the chip running with only a heatsink and are known to encourage the use of the processor in such a configuration.

The problem with this argument, however, is that VIA doesn’t state that the chip can only be used for a fraction of its original time OR at a fraction of its original speed in exchange for removing the fan. By stating that the drive should only be powered for 333 hours per month, IBM is limiting usage to about eleven hours per day. In other words, VIA sells the chip with a heatsink and fan, but also deploys it in a heatsink-only configuration with no loss of performance. The fan may be there, but only for liability reasons.

By stating that their drives should only be used for eleven hours per day, IBM is drastically limiting the performance of the drive (as compared to its competitors) as well as its appearance in the market. The ability of the VIA chips to run with less cooling than expected is a tremendous positive—but for IBM drives to be perceived as only recommended for eleven hours a day when their competitors make no such recommendations about their own product is a tremendous negative. The argument that the two situations are comparable, therefore, is false. One company is demonstrating a product that exceeds market expectations, while the other is demonstrating a product that fails to meet them.

Part of the confusion regarding this situation could be resolved if IBM would clarify whether the 333 hours-per-month stipulation referred to hours the drive was powered on, or hours the drive was engaged in reading/writing. Once again, however, the company has not deigned to comment on the situation.

Has IBM properly disclosed the operating conditions of the GXP line of drives?

The one comment I DID get from IBM when I brought up the 333 hours-per-month operating time restriction on the 120GXP is that this stipulation has, in fact, been present on ALL of the GXP lines. We investigated their claim and found the following:

The restriction is not noted on any of the GXP drives itself.

No documentation was included that mentioned this monthly restriction to purchasers of the GXP line at either the consumer or business level.

No information mentioning the GXP’s recommended hourly rate is discussed in any press release related to any GXP product. Furthermore, the drives are expressly and explicitly targeted to high-end enterprise buyers.

No data about the restriction is present on IBM’s Deskstar homepage.

There IS, in fact, information about the various restrictions present on the specific pages for the drives themselves, but the information is in different places for each drive.

For the 120GXP, the restriction is noted in the two-page “Data Sheet and Specification” document under the “Reliability” section.

Neither the 75GXP nor the 60GXP have the 333 hour-per-month specification mentioned in their own versions of that document, however. The 60GXP lists this setting only in its “Functional Specifications” document—a hefty 195 page engineering-level PDF. The specification in question is located ‘prominently’ on page 50 in a relatively small section. The 75GXP, on the other hand, does not have a “Functional Specification” link and does not mention the limitation on its data sheet either. I was unable, in fact, to even FIND mention of such a limitation for this particular model.

So, we’re left with the following situation: A limitation IBM claims is specified on all three drives isn’t mentioned in the shipping documentation, on the drive itself, or in any press release. The specification, in fact, is mentioned only in three different places on three different websites, and is only easily found on one. Furthermore, the limitation in question is placed on drives IBM markets as being “enterprise solutions”, suitable for high-end workstation use for multimedia and graphics presentations. Its not as if these are IBM’s budget line of drives, after all—these drives are (theoretically) the top of the line models.

This does not strike me as proper disclosure of a drive limitation. Even if the drive limitation stretches beyond the IBM Deskstar line and into its competitor’s products as well, the company has essentially switched performance metrics without informing anyone of the change.

The best example of a proper metric-switch is AMD’s recent decision to use model numbers instead of MHz. When they made the change, AMD highly publicized it and openly disclosed their measurement data, their specifications, and the reasons for the metric switch. Whether people agreed or disagreed with it, the quantifiable data was laid on the table for examination.

In this case, even if IBM were to argue that other IDE hard drives from other manufacturers suffer from the same limitations; their failure to explain and discuss this new “hours per month” metric has drastically hurt their drive’s perception in the market.

This situation actually reminds me from a scene in the popular book “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” where Arthur Dent (who’s house is about to be destroyed) questions a public official about when the plans to destroy it were made and how he was informed. The following quote illustrates the situation quite well:

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available [and on display] in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.”

Sound familiar?
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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