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Is IBM the best over all hard drive available? I am looking for a HD that will not give me problems so soon. Currently I have a IBM Deskstar 80gb HD and it really never gave me trouble. Now, I looking for a 200gb+ HD that would be just as good. I've heard of Maxtor, Western Digital and IBM. Any suggestions?

Thanx for your time.

Many people think that IBM drives are not very good; however, I don't have much experience with IBM drives personally. Most people will agree that Seagate and Maxtor are probably better choices.

uh oh...

the IBM Deskstar 75GXP, 60GXP had very high failure rates.
the 120GXP were not certified to run 24/7!!!

anyway, since then IBM sold off their desktop hard drive business to Hitachi.
http://www.hgst.com/

i don't really know how good their drives are, but many prefer to stay away from them.
anyway i'm sure most people would definitely not say IBM hard drives are the best.

ps. i'm talking IDE hard drives. SCSI is different altoghether, IBM didn't sell that off AFAIK, and i've no idea how good/bad they are.

In addition to Maxtor and Western Digital, I would look at Seagate...or even Samsung. Stay away from IBM, you'll be glad you did.

Another vote to avoid IBM. I've had three of their drives fail in computers supplied to me by my employer. I've never had a Maxtor, Western Digital, or Seagate failure (knock wood).

cfitz

I've heard them called Deathstars...
me, I've been successful with Maxtor and Seagate.

I'm a fan of Maxtor.

The regular earlier IBM drives that aren't those deskstar or whatever are pretty good. I have a couple that have been fine. The newer ones are hitachi and aren't as good.

The IBM hard drive in a friend's Sony Vaio is so dead it isn't funny.

The laptop drive was used daily, but it wasn't used any more or less than a desktop.

One day a few weeks ago the PC refused to boot up (in Windows ME). I had to re-start in DOS, and try to Scandisk - no go.

Fortunately I was able to retrieve the data from the hard drive by hooking it up to a desktop and use it as a slave for an hour or so. Then it started to die right there even faster. The drive all of a sudden refused to read many many critical files.

I ran SpinRite (the best and only utility for low level repair and reading) on it. After running SpinRite for 137 hours (continuously), I was able to get the remaining critical files off of it. However, the hard drive is not bootable anymore, and is more or less a paper weight.

UALOneKPlus wrote:I ran SpinRite (the best and only utility for low level repair and reading) on it.

Do you happen to know if there is a NTFS capable version of this program? Or a good alternative? Spinrite 5.0 only recovers from FAT/FAT32 disks.

MikeTR wrote:

UALOneKPlus wrote:I ran SpinRite (the best and only utility for low level repair and reading) on it.

Do you happen to know if there is a NTFS capable version of this program? Or a good alternative? Spinrite 5.0 only recovers from FAT/FAT32 disks.

Unfortunately there is no current version of this program that works on NTFS

Steve Gibson stands to make a lot more money if he would get that version out.

IBM/Hitashi DeskStar series are quite sensitive to heat, so if you're trying to jam 4 of them into a $200 eMachine, have fun RMA the HDs. No wonder Apple use Toshiba HDs on their iBooks, PowerBooks, and iPods.

I have a pair of IBM 30GB 75GXP in RAID 0, an IBM 120GB 120GXP, and a pair of Maxtor 20GB D740X-L also in RAID 0. Also have a pair of WDSE 120GB/8MB coming in. Been running them for 20 months, 18 months and 6 months, respectively. The thing is I don't use them as primary HDs, only has secondary file storage. Plus, they're all well ventilated in an Antec SX830 and SX1030 series case, w/ 80mm fan blowing on them.

Right now, I'm using Maxtor Plus9 160GB/8MB as the primary HDs on the PCs systems (2). I also have a G4 dual 1.25G running a WDSE 40GB/8MB as primary.

A lot of people say Seagate makes the most quiet HD, never tried them, so I can't confirm. From experience, IBMs and Maxtor's have the lowest dba, WDSE w/ the highest.

Stoner wrote:A lot of people say Seagate makes the most quiet HD, never tried them, so I can't confirm.

My 160GB 7200RPM 8MB cache Seagate drive is very quiet. Then again, the newer Maxtor drives are very quiet, too.

Lol..see sig. I had 3 Deathstars die on me, AFTER RMAs.
I've heard the new 7K250s are awesome though, and the 180GXPs are good too.

I'm partial to Western Digital, myself.

Keep an eye out in the Best Buy, CompUSA, and Circuit City ads and you'll find some great deals.