View Full Version : Why does it always rain on me :) I HATE IBM
Silent Solutions
31-07-2002, 17:57
Check the irony of this.
AM Diary:
4pm yesterday, gets email confirmation of lovely new silent segate hard-drive on the way to arrive 2moro.
3am last night, AM just finishes off tidying up computer ready to back up files, and make ghost in the morning for new HD.
11am today, AM sees lovely new parcel wating excitidly switchs on puter, crunch, whine, crunch, whine...(u get the picture)! ERROR READING DRIVE!
Surely its a joke?! No the needles isn't reading the drive, and I CANNOT get into. Tired all the obvious, swaping IDE's, restarting - nadda!
I can only conclude, that IBM have actually come up with a very advanced form of artificial inteligence, and its malfunctioned in all they're drives. It realised that it was being replaced by the competition "Don't do that DAVE", and disabled itself to spite me!
Any other suggestions?
ARRGHHH, thing is Ebuyer will replace it or refund it, IBM will mend it, or replace it, neither will help retrieve data, and there is loads of important stuff from the past week that I hadn't backed up, appart from on the partition!
Boo hoo, tearfully,
AM
daveyj27
31-07-2002, 18:32
Oooh bad luck m8!! I wouldnt touch an IBM drive with a barge pole nowadays.
Silent Solutions
31-07-2002, 19:39
Originally posted by daveyj27:
<STRONG>Oooh bad luck m8!! I wouldnt touch an IBM drive with a barge pole nowadays.</STRONG>
LOL I wouldn't even touch em with your barge pole!
Its just so frustrating the very day I was going to change it!
But on a more positive note, SEAGATE ROCKS!
I can hardly hear it just a very slow click when it rights, and a slight hum! Fantastic, and SO quick compared to the IBM, its speeded up my system no end! :)
Don't suppose anyone can suggest a way of getting the data? Silly question but so much quality P**N *opps* I mean so much of my research! No seriously, weeks of research, I hadn't bothered backing up till the change over!!
Dead_One
31-07-2002, 19:47
Depends how vital the data is, it tends to be v expensive to get it recovered if drive is dead.....
100's not 10's of quid
Big Adam
31-07-2002, 20:39
Bitch of a story mate.
Remember to update that signature!!
interestingly enough EVERY seagate I've ever had (and thats a few) has failed within a year, and a fair majority of repairs I've carried out were failed seagate drives. IBM drives on the other hand have been fine with me, I've never had a problem so far (fingers crossed) ;)
unbelievable! my last remaining Seagate hd has just reported a SMART fail on boot as I typed the last post - spooky or what?
PJ Matthews
31-07-2002, 22:12
I use IBM harddisks all the time and it only seem to be the older models that fail, newer models seem to be just fine with a failure rate no worst than other manufactures now.
As i have said once b4 and will say many times again, my IBM drive has never let me down yet!
40GB Erricson 7200rpm still going strong from October 2001
The Pimp
01-08-2002, 00:07
Don't get me started on IBM drives again :mad: :mad: Lost count of how many I have had to replace in the past 2 years alone (I have 4 dead drives still sitting in front of me). Only ever had ONE Seagate drive fail on me and that was a ATA66 15Gb drive which Seagate replaced with a 30Gb BarracudaIII, no questions asked. Nowadays I won't use anything but Seagate drives, and one of my main suppliers is now knocking out 80Gb IBM's for the same price as 40Gb BarracudaIV's cost, because they have had nothing but returns with them as well. IBM SCSI drives tend to be fine, but then again not everyone uses SCSI so the percentage of returns will be lower obviously.
Two good companies I have used to recover data from faulty hard drives are: www.ontrack.co.uk (http://www.ontrack.co.uk) and www.mjm.co.uk (http://www.mjm.co.uk)
Expect to pay in the region of £500 - £1000 tho' :(
I believe mjm will do selective recovery (If you can remember directories and files you need) this may be cheaper.
AM, as far as I remember it is the controller board on the underside of the drive that fails I read a post somewhere someone had another drive and swapped the controller board from the working drive over to the one that failed and got the data off the drive... so if you have another drive that could be worth a try, just remember to back up the data from the drive you are borrowing the controller board from before you start...
;)
I think the post was on the hardforum, if I find it again I'll post it or mebbe someone else knows where it could have been...
Silent Solutions
03-08-2002, 06:00
Its straneg i know many people that swear by IBM, but after searching the web for 60/75gxp I found loads of sites with hundreds of people having the exact same problem, so there does seem to be a problem with quality control or design, and or both! :)
You live and learn! Seagates rock though! So quiet and so fast! :)
AM
PJ Matthews
03-08-2002, 23:20
Thats the old series - no one is having any serious problems with the new generation 120 gxp. I'm running a fair few and ALL are fine. People get your facts right before writing off a whole manufacture - eshh.
The Pimp
04-08-2002, 00:51
I have PJ and I have also seen a number of dead GXP120's as well.
PJ Matthews
04-08-2002, 13:26
Yeah right. Like I said before, the 120 GXP series has no serious flaws (as a simple check of the web will reveal). Once again I repeat that teh failure rate is no higher than any other manufacture! Eshh
I've got 2 Seagate drives to return! the last time I sent one back Seagate sent a replacement....which failed within hours of fitting :mad: It was making a weird metallic rubbing noise then completely died so I'm guessing at a mechanical fault rather than any IC probs.
Still it costs around 7 quid per drive to return for replacement which although not a lot of money does totally annoy me!
As for IBM GXP drives, I think they got a lot more media attention than other manufacturers, so when problems occurred IBM got it in the neck more than other companies.
I think the risk of drive failure is probably much the same whatever manufacturer you choose - some people have horrible Seagate, Maxtor etc. and some have IBM.
www.viahardware.com (http://www.viahardware.com) posted news about a server problem thay had and said it was caused by an IBM drive. I can't help but think that if it was another manufacturer then the post would've read 'server problem - drive fail' and not mentioned the manufacturer.
Graeme*Kustom*
04-08-2002, 18:37
Speaking from a retailers point of view - the IBMs did have quite a high fail rate for us, as did Fujitsu. Western Digital and Maxtor weren't too bad, but of late we've used Seagate B-IVs for everything... we sell about 20 of them per week, and in the past 6 months have had ONE come back (Dead on Arrival) .
One out of a few hundred is not bad at all, and way better than any other manufacturer.
I'm well aware of Seagate's past - their older IDE drives were not too great, but the B-IVs are fantastic.
Detritus
06-08-2002, 17:15
/me wipes the sweat from his forehead.
Phew...I was beginning to worry about my B-IV...or more precisely the data on it. Maybe I should run a backup anyway, just in case.
l8r,
Det
Graeme*Kustom*
06-08-2002, 19:22
you should backup no matter what make of HD you have...
Have you tried the diagnostic program IBM have on their website - from reports I've read it wont be a long-term fix but may well get your drive working long enough to back up the data.. From learning the hard way I now replace my HDD every two years anyway, but 15 months on and my 75GXP is still running fast, silent and error free
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