Computing
- IBM 60GXP Hard Drive
The infamous 60GXP Hard drive from IBM.
Never has such a hard drive caused so many
threads and conversations on professional computer web sites,
mainly due to what appears to be a rather abnormal fail rate
with both this line of hard drives and it's predecessor, the
75GXP.
The original IBM Deskstar line of HD's (75GXP)
was a top performing drive. There was no other drive on the
market which could match it's performance and it became a big
seller. In addition with IDE RAID becoming more popular, the IBM
was again an obvious choice, in RAID configurations the
performance was again amazing.
The Deskstar has evolved from the 75GXP to the
60GXP and the current and probably final configuration is the
120GXP. The main differences between the three drive families is
the platter size, the 75GXP used 15GB platters, the 60GXP
introduced 20GB platters and the 120GXP gave us 40GB platters.
The table below shows IBM's posted
specifications on the three drive families:
| |
75GXP |
60GXP |
120GXP |
| |
|
|
|
| Interface |
ATA-100 |
ATA-100 |
ATA-100 |
| Capacity (GB) |
75/60/45/30/15 |
60/40/20 |
120/80/60/40 |
| Data Buffer |
2MB |
2MB |
2MB |
| Rotational Speed (rpm) |
7,200 |
7,200 |
7,200 |
| Latency (Average) ms |
4.17 |
4.17 |
4.17 |
| Media Transfer rate (Mbits/sec) |
444 |
494 |
592 |
| Interface Transfer rate (MB/sec) |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| Sustained data transfer rate (MB/sec) |
37 |
40.8 - 20.9 |
48 - 23 |
| Seek Time (Average) ms |
8.5 |
8.5 |
8.5 |
| Seek Time (Track to Track) ms |
1.2 |
1.2 |
1.1 |
| Seek Time (Full Track) ms |
15 |
15 |
15 |
Not a major difference between the three
families, sustained data transfer rate is increased with each
new generation, general speed and performance remains pretty
constant from one family to the next.
Reliability?
There has been much discussion
about the reliability of the IBM units. A lot of people have
reported unexpected drive failures and not just on a single
unit.
Replacement units seem to fail
and many people have said they will never buy another IBM Hard
Drive as long as they live, so is there any truth behind these
claims?
There is no doubt that there are
a lot of reported failures out there, even if we eliminate some
of these reports due to "making up stories" and "jumping on the
bandwagon" we are still left with a lot of reported problems.
One factor that must be taken
into consideration is the sheer number of these units out in the
field. Because of their extremely high performance and rave
reviews a lot of people bought these units, this gave IBM an
extremely high percentage of the IDE hard drive market. Any
company that occupies a high market share are going to have an
inflated fail rate due to the number of units out there in use,
although it may still fall within acceptable levels.
Most "experts" agree that the
IBM units appear to be failing due to heat issues, it is very
possible that IBM was pushing the technology to the very limit
and in adequately cooled cases are another cause for the
problems.
It is not unheard of to have two
of more of these units inside a workstation, two IBM drives both
generating heat inside a badly cooled case could well have
increased the chance of failure and other problems.
Lastly, there is the
over-clocking factor. Many computer enthusiasts over-clock their
systems, it is these very people who are likely to have read the
reviews and purchased the very fastest hard drives available.
Could the fact that their systems were over-clocked be a baring
on the failure rate?
Personal Experience
I have 4 x 60GB 60GXP units in
my home system. I use a Cooler Master ATC201 aluminium computer
case which has two fans at the very front drawing in cool air
which blow directly across the IBM hard drives.
I have not had a single problem
with my drives, all of them are the ones I originally purchased
and none of them have shown any indication they might fail
(although some people will tell you that they don't tend to,
they just fail out of the blue).
However at work it is a
different story, I've seen no less than eight failed units out
of the forty or so workstations my users run. Some of these were
from the 75GXP family, others from the 60GXP.
This equates to an approximate
20% fail rate on the IBM units and I do feel this is probably a
little on the high side. The workstations we use at work are all
generic "No Name" machines with no active cooling other than a
CPU fan. Maybe some people are onto things with this heat issue,
maybe adding an active fan to the front of all our work
workstations would result in a decrease in the fail rate.
Earlier this year IBM sold their
hard drive business to Hitachi, so we will not see any future
IBM IDE hard drives on the market. This could just be
coincidence of course, the majority of companies throughout the
world are having economic problems of some kind. However some
people will still tell you that IBM sold up because of their
drive issues, they have had enough, the constant replacements
under warranty means the division was loosing too much money and
they just decided to leave that particular market.
Nobody but some high-up people
at IBM would be able to answer that question for us and I doubt
very much we will ever see an official answer on that.
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