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IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30 GB
by AndreBoyle
The deskstar drive units have had a bad press, there's no doubt abut that. One friend recently described them as deathstar drives because his experience has been so bad. My experience has been as far removed as I could have hoped for. The drive, given it's price, is exceptionally good value for money. The size to £ ratio ... is very good indeed. The speed of the drive has been more than adequate, with average seek times producing admirable real-world results for my most common use, video editing. My own drive has been heavily partitioned to make effective use of the unit without dealing with the usual waste of space, something I'd highly recommend doing, especially for video editing.
One thing that's starting to concern me... which might prompt for update on this drive down the line is the odd clicking and whirring noises it makes. Not that they happen often, just every few days and for only a few seconds. But they've scared the heck out of people who've never heard them before thinking they've caused things to blow up.
Immediate verdict is good, in the long term I might be taking advatnge of IBMs superb warranty on the deskstar drives. Who knows!?!
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IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30 GB
by toecee
I've only had the hard drive a month and have only 5GB loaded but my first opinion is how noisy it is. It almost talks! It whines and grunts like an old man! It's all a bit scary and makes me wonder if I have a duffer. I bought the drive from Micro Direct, Manchester, UK, because my other drive went on the blink. The ... specification was excellent for the price. Transferring stuff from the old drive was OK and I loading Windows XP with no problems.
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IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30 GB
by stinky monkey
Hard drives go bigger and faster and you would hope get more reliable as better manufacturing techniques come into place. IBM have built up a reputation over the last 2-3 years for making fast and very reliable hard drives so this reputation should put them right at the top of your list in the event of you needing more storage ... space.
My personal experiences with "Deep Blue" go back approx 5 years when i was the proud owner of a 3.4 drive.
I was amazed at the speed increase over my old western digital drive and it served me very well until i sold it on to a friend.
The drive is still going strong to this day with not a hint of trouble.
My next IBM's came in the shape of two 13.6 7200rpm drives , samne story to report as they where faster again over the 3.4 offering and i also noticed a nice drop in the decibel level .
Used as single drives they worked fine and they have run on a ide raid card for the past 12 months with a good increase in speed.
So the picture looks good , 3 drives all work great and not one single hint of possible problems.
Enter the 75gxp , nice drive ,fast speeds and nice and quite, infact i thought the drive was doa at first as i did not sound like it was turning!.
Three months pass and then a hoorible knocking sound errupted from the pc!!.
I had dreaded this as i had begun to see several reports of this drive failing.
The pc was switched off and that is the last act the drive ever committed due to it refusing to power up again.
Thankfully i bought this drive from a friend of mine who is a dealer and on taking it back to him the horrible failure rate became all to apparent as he had approx a dozen dead IBM's on his desk readfy to go back under warranty.
Things did not improve , it was not just a bad batch that had problems and a search on the internet and various computer sites will confirm that this drive is a dodo if ever there was.
I am now running a Maxtor 740x and find that it is upto speed with the 75gxp if a little noisier.
IBM have a lot of hard work to do to get back the reputation they once had as i believe they had similar problems with another dirve 60gxp ?
My adivce ? go with Maxtor or give IBM's new drive the 120 6 months before you part with your money.
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