IBM Deskstar = Deathstar

[vwestlife]

I was going through some hard drives I pulled from trashpicked computers, when I came across a 46.1 GB IBM drive that spins up but isn't properly recognized by BIOS and thus won't format. Turns out it's a Deskstar 75GXP -- a highly crash-prone hard drive model that was the subject of a class-action lawsuit against IBM, and is one of the main reasons why IBM gave up on making their own hard drives and sold out to Hitachi. So, I now have a nice metal-encased paperweight on my hands. It's no wonder that an otherwise good computer got trashed, since it had one of these turkeys inside it! :(

PC World magazine called it the 18th worst tech product of all time:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125772-page,5/article.html

At least it didn't have my personal data on it, and now I can have some fun taking it apart. :)

[Vlad]

I use dead hard drives as geek coasters. Heat never has a chance to reach the desk surface and its nifty looking. Also works as a platform to keep a small plant on your desk.

[carlsson]

It sounds like the Seagate SCSI disks from the mid-1990s, c:a 1 GB.

As for a pile of hard disks, I'm currently having eight loose IDE drives laying around:
* Conner 540 MB (working, a little noisy)
* IBM ~870 MB (not tested, may work)
* Maxtor 2,1 GB (working, awfully noisy)
* Maxtor 3,2 GB (working, awfully noisy)
* Quantum 3,2 GB (working, fine to use)
* Fujitsu 13 GB (not tested, should be OK)
* Fujitsu 40 GB (bad sectors, will be a test object for DBAN)
* Excelstor 40 GB (totally dead, contains semi-important data)

One of my PCs currently lacks a hard disk, so I'll install the 13 GB. I hope to get at least one of the 40 GB disks back in operation, perhaps the Fujitsu. I considered putting three of the medium sized disks in the same computer for a total of 8.5 GB, but the Maxtors make so much noise (bearing layer?) to make it uncomfortable.

[Jorg]

Well, I wouldn't call it the worst product of all time, as this disk was the fastest disk around at that time (in his class).

But yes, not for long...
I remember the famous clicks of death it had, announcing that you were too late.

[MikeS]

Well, I wouldn't call it the worst product of all time...
---
Does anyone remember Kalok and JTS? Infamous names from the HD past...
And there was the BigFoot...

m

[Jorg]

---
Does anyone remember Kalok and JTS? Infamous names from the HD past...
And there was the BigFoot...

m

I came around a Kalok in a nice Multi-user DOS machine, a FH 5,25 10 MB disk it was.
Couldn't revive it, and when I came back in the office a few days later the system was gone... darn, they promised to save it for me.

I have two Bigfoots, a 1,2 and a 2,5 gb one. I know the stories, but they never gave me trouble at all, they still work.
Not fast, but for the price it was ok.
Had the 1,2 gb in a router pc for a while, good enough for it.

In earlier days, I was a Conner adept. Too bad they were 'assimilated'.

[Druid6900]

What I used to do with dead HDs was take the top cover off, sink the ass-end into a little trough of liquid epoxy to make a base and give them to people for up-right paperweights.

I think every member of my family and all my friends ended up with one at some point or another.

[vwestlife]

---
Does anyone remember Kalok and JTS? Infamous names from the HD past...
And there was the BigFoot...
Ironically, my Quantum Bigfoot 10 GB drive is still working flawlessly. It still has that nice mellow 5¼" sound to it, just like the old MFM drives of yore -- although the performance is mellow, too, due to its low 3600 RPM speed.

I also had a Kalok Octagon 20 MB MFM drive in my Tandy 1000 for a while and it never gave me any trouble.

These days I'm loyal to Seagate 120 GB drives, as they are the largest that my newest PCs will support (due to the 128 GB BIOS/Windows 98 limit) and they are so astonishingly quiet -- you have to literally put your ear up against the computer case to hear them make any noise, even when accessing data... I just hope they don't let me down.

[Vlad]

Seagate drives for me have always been a little loud, but rock solid reliable. Lately I've been preferring my Samsung drive over others. I don't trust Western Digital at all anymore, I've had way too many failures from their products.

[Trixter]

Well, I wouldn't call it the worst product of all time, as this disk was the fastest disk around at that time (in his class).

But yes, not for long...
I remember the famous clicks of death it had, announcing that you were too late.

All drives make that noise when they're dying.

Personally I think the 75GXP line had a really bad reputation. I ran two 30GB 75GXPs mirrored for nearly five years and they still work. In fact, they were so damn fast compared to other crud at the time that I pretty much buy only Hitachi drives if I want speed, or Seagate if I want the 5-yr-warranty, depending on purpose.

[mbbrutman]

Well, I just came back from a business trip to find the Deathstar drive in my primary system is dead.

'Click', 'click', 'click' is the sound of it seeking after an I/O erro reading a sector.

I had a full image backup taken the day before I left so I'm only going to lose a few hours of work in Quicken and some email. I've also had a 160GB Seagate that I bought in Dec standing by for when this happened. And now it's happened ...

Grrr.

[Jorg]

All drives make that noise when they're dying.


I'm happy not too have that information :)
I only had it with that IBM drive. I also had a death Maxtor once, but that was just.. dead.
It did nothing one day when I turned the PC on.

The two Bigfoots I have I save for when I might run out of MFM drives.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am also a victim of the 75GXP disaster. In my case a 45GB model. It seems to me that the problem had to do with the glass platters IBM used on this drive. I believe it was the first IBM drive to use glass platters. Somewhere on the internet somebody had posted a picture of the inside of the drive after it had failed, and all of the magnetic substrate had been scraped off the glass platters by the heads.

I had the option to RMA my drive for a replacement after the failure, but as it turns out the replacement was a model that also had a bad reputation. I think it was the 60GXP. Anyway, it was a shame the whole scandal took down IBMs harddrive division, since until that time they made pretty nice drives.

[squirrel-steam]

I have a 10gb IBM deskstar in an old p2 gateway that has been dropped 10 ft, falled over numerous times (it is a huge tower, about 3 feet tall,) and under 1 foot of water when my friend's basement flooded before he gave it to me, just dried it out, and started it up.

I also had 2 bigfoots, what they loose in rpm, they make up in only having one platter. But i had a 2.5gb out of a compaq that didn't have a bad sector until a year ago it all of a sudden died. Then i have a 8gb Bigfoot that i dropped from about sholder height, it still works.

[squirrel-steam]

Well, I just came back from a business trip to find the Deathstar drive in my primary system is dead.

'Click', 'click', 'click' is the sound of it seeking after an I/O erro reading a sector.

I had a full image backup taken the day before I left so I'm only going to lose a few hours of work in Quicken and some email. I've also had a 160GB Seagate that I bought in Dec standing by for when this happened. And now it's happened ...

Grrr.

The original hard drive in my Quantex was a Western digital 836mb that did the click of death.

[dreddnott]

The first drive that betrayed me was actually a Fujitsu 3.2GB. All the others, from 40MB to 400MB, were still working fine. It was really sad how it happened - drive went clunk, then worked again, but Scandisk ran and detected about 2.9 billion bytes of lost clusters. :( :( :( :(

I see carlsson mentions the Seagate 1GB SCSI, I have one of those! It's a full-height 5.25" drive, it takes forever to spin up and makes quite a bit of noise.

I must also repeat my ST-251 anecdote, a few years ago I was copying my old files off of it, and since I had placed it haphazardly in the case, one of the larger traces shorted and caught the PCB on fire. The copy continued successfully while I frantically moved the drive and blew the smoke away, and the drive still works.

When I worked for a local electronics recycler, one of my duties was to test and wipe every hard drive that came in, and toss the ones that were dead into a large bin. Most of the drives were Western Digital, Maxtor, or Seagate, but most of the failures were IBM and Hitachi (they bought out IBM's HDD manufacturing division shortly after the Deskstar fiasco). The 75GXP is particularly infamous, if you've got one you should save it! :)