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#1
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About SMART and a Doofy IBM Deskstar...
Bought this super quiet, super fast, seemingly super nice IBM 20 gig
Deskstar back in 2001 when it was the hot thing and it's been pretty good. But recently it's started to become flaky. The model number is a mile long, but I believe it's IC35L020AVER07-0. Out of the blue one day it wasn't detected in the BIOS and I noticed that it was just sitting there grinding away - "ZZZT - ZZZT - ZZZT (pause for about a second) ZZZT - ZZZT -ZZZT" and would do that until I powered off. Other times it would be identified in the BIOS, but would show up as oddball ASCII charcters. Then, it would boot fine on other occasions and all data was intact (About 14 gigs of data on a single partition). Finally it decided that it wasn't going to do anything - No matter how I tried, it just sat there grinding. I had most of my data backed up, but not all of it - damn! Ah well. So I downloaded and ran the fitness tests. Came up with "Defective Drive." Like I didn't know that! lol I ran the "Clean Drive" option that presumably low-level formats the drive. Drive seemed great afterwards. But a few days later it started getting flaky again in the same manner. Went through the same motions with the Drive Fitness application and that brought it back to life. But again... few days later... The drive is still under warranty (I believe it has a three year warrantee) and so I'm going to RMA it and see if IBM (or Hitachi, whomever it is now) will honor the warranty. My motherboard is an Asus P3B-F that support SMART monitoring and I have that enabled. Also, the SMART tests in the IBM fitness application simply say "Good" for results even when the drive is acting up. What good is SMART!? Does it just monitor electronics, or doe sit detect media problems as well? This is my first IBM Deskstar and while it has been a good performer, I thought surely for the price it would last longer than two years. I've got some older drives still going strong! I'm kind of leary of buying a new IBM drive now and not sure if I want to trust the replacment from IBM (If I get one). How do ya'all feel about IBM Deskstar drives? Was this just an unlucky failure? Thanks, -Steve |
#2
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Steve Reinis wrote:
Bought this super quiet, super fast, seemingly super nice IBM 20 gig Deskstar back in 2001 when it was the hot thing and it's been pretty good. But recently it's started to become flaky. The model number is How do ya'all feel about IBM Deskstar drives? Was this just an unlucky failure? Thanks, -Steve The 60/75GXP series had plenty of problems. According to some, the 120GXP series isn't much better. -- Winerr 00B - Push Error; Removing Files to Make Room for Advertisement |
#3
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Hmm... I downloaded the ID tool and it shows my drive as needing a firmware
update. The firmware update says that it improves drive stability as well as updates for SMART... Since it seems that this drive runs fine for a random amount of time and then out of the blue shows up with random bad sectors, I wonder if this firmware patch will fix that and make it reliable again... Everytime it acts up, I can run the IBM Fitness Tests and "Clean Disk" procedure and the drive is like new again for a random amount of time. Thanks for that link - I'll give it a shot. Ken wrote in message ... On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 17:08:30 GMT, "S.Heenan" wrote: The 60/75GXP series had plenty of problems. According to some, the 120GXP series isn't much better. The early 120GXP are not better, but later versions is better. It is possible to upgrade the firmware in old 120GXP. http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...psg1MIGR-44195 |
#4
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OH - I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that experienced that!
Downloaded the 150kb drive ID application - Said I needed a firmware upgrade. Downloaded the Firmware upgrade and went through the motions and it said that I didn't need an update. So, I got the same results... And I was ****ed since I'm on dial-up and downloading that 2.5 MB firmware update took me twenty minutes. I tried poking through the files and see if I could force it to update without it loading the DFT software first, bu tno such luck. Typical IBM nonsense. lol -Steve Gary Hegan wrote in message ... I ran the utility and it said I needed a firmware update so I made the DFT Bootable floppy and it ran the scan of drives and it said I did not need a firmware update. My firmware is A41A and the one I downloaded A45A. Why would one say I need the update and the other says I don't. -- Regards (-: Gary Hegan :-) "Steve Reinis" wrote in message ... Hmm... I downloaded the ID tool and it shows my drive as needing a firmware update. The firmware update says that it improves drive stability as well as updates for SMART... Since it seems that this drive runs fine for a random amount of time and then out of the blue shows up with random bad sectors, I wonder if this firmware patch will fix that and make it reliable again... Everytime it acts up, I can run the IBM Fitness Tests and "Clean Disk" procedure and the drive is like new again for a random amount of time. Thanks for that link - I'll give it a shot. Ken wrote in message ... On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 17:08:30 GMT, "S.Heenan" wrote: The 60/75GXP series had plenty of problems. According to some, the 120GXP series isn't much better. The early 120GXP are not better, but later versions is better. It is possible to upgrade the firmware in old 120GXP. http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...psg1MIGR-44195 |
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