dead IBM drives

[fav]

Please anyone with problems who have problems with HDDs that burn your fingers when touched or dead after few months/weeks after purchasing - CAN you report here (or by e-mail) what PSU (power unit) model you have?

It would be better if you can measure (with a voltmeter or thru BIOS/monitoring software) the true value of '+12 volt' voltage parameter (it may drift under loads, don't experiment if you not sure). Consult to PSU manuals, it should be black and yellow wire.

Applicable to (ex-)owners of non-IBM hardware too.

Thanks in advance.

[Dr Mordrid]

Dead IBM drives 'eh?

Lack of reliability with IBM drives has been a huge story in the computer news sites for months and has resulted in a class action lawsuit against IBM here in the US. IBM as much as admitted the problem exists when they lowered their HDD's recommended usage to only 11 hours/day.

If you do a search here you'll come up with lots of reading

As a result of all the fallout IBM has sold their HDD division to Hitachi.

More info here;

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/1183321

and here;

http://www.sheller.com/ibmclassaction.htm

Dr. Mordrid

[fav]

Who cares about press-releases? If you have encountered the problem you may want to find a solution?

[cjolley]

I had two 45gig 75GXPs go out on me within a week of each other about 8 months ago.
They replaced them with two 60gig 60GXPs which have been doing fine so far...
Enlight 300w PSU.
Chuck

[Indiana]

There's an easy solution: Do not use IBM harddrives... (they do work fine, however, just only as long as they work at all.)

This only seems to fit to newer IBM drives as I have quite a lot of them and while the old ones DO work reliably, I have lost two newer of the AVER (IC35LC040) series. They're the only harddrives that ever died early on me. I still have a an old Seagate Barracuda 4GB - one of the first 7200RPM drives- and even an old Quantum LPS270 working.

P.S.: Yes, I have an extra fan for the HDs and they're NOT overheating, not even getting warm. So my solution for the future is "stay clean of IBM HDs", the same as I will stay clean of Creative soundcards.

[Dr Mordrid]

Exactly the point I was trying to make, but I guess I was being too subtle

Correction:

IF you have IBM drives, get rid of them.

IF you don't, keep it that way.

Dr. Mordrid

[Indiana]

P.S.: I just saw that one of the drives in my external SCSI-box even is a Quantum LPS105 with a whopping 105MB capacity. I have it since the early Amiga2000 days and it's still working fine.

Of course it not of much use todays except for file transfers between the Amiga4000 and the PC.

[fav]

Guys, don't make me crazy, stick to my question. PLEASE.

All I need is your power supply +12 output values.

That's all.

(If you get higher than +12.00 even a little, say +12.10 on your HDD, IBM or not, may get hotter up to 70C compared to +11.80 40C normally.)

Nor more educated guess or relaying other's opinions, PLEASE.

Just SpeedFan/MotherBoard Monitor/BIOS/voltmeter output (both when your machine idle and under heavy load, say copy large files or running Sandra/PCMark2002 file system test).

Can you get a REAL measure or you continue to jam useless newspapers and refering to lawyers?

cjolley, can you do it?

Just do it.

Indiana: Yes, I have an extra fan for the HDs and they're NOT overheating
fav: How can be you sure that temperature is ONLY the issue? Not everything can be cured by putting an additional heatsinks, even if a HDD metallic case is colder than a ball of ice-cream.

Dr Mordrid: IF you have IBM drives, get rid of them.
fav: Nice argumentation, my Doctor. Can you point to a box full of money worth $60k to replace, say, 300 working perfectly IBM 18Gb SCSI HDDs (along 600 by other manufacturers?), to become ... eh... Morbid compiliant?

[Wombat]

Gosh you're pushy. How would 300mV account for a 30C difference? That's only 5% more power, assuming the drive is too poorly designed to regulate it.

A couple things: 1: The motherboard monitors aren't that great. If you're actually worried about the quality of the line, you have to get a meter on it.

2: It's more likely to be low 12v rather than high 12v causing problems.

3: If the trouble IS caused by a bad 12v, it's not likely to just be bad all the time, so how would you suggest people check for worst-case droop?

[Dr Mordrid]

Probably by putting the meter on while running a drive speed test I guess, but in any case Wombat is correct: 300mv isn't going to cause a 30C temperature difference unless the drive itself is totally screwed.

I'd copy the data off that thing and get something else. The Maxtor D740X has been great here. Quiet and cool running.

Dr. Mordrid

[fav]

Wombat: How would 300mV account for a 30C difference?

How many weight you can pull? What happens if you get 10kg more? C'mon, it's only 10kg more, comparing to 200kg of load, even a kid can lift 10kg!

Yeah, I know that mainboard meter is not near to ideal. And honestly you need to be sure that your meter is calibrated too.

But something is much better than nothing.

Can you just do it?

2: Really counts how PSU behave under burst of load.

[Dr Mordrid]

Did some quick direct measurements with my meter.

On the system I tested the P/S is an Antec 430 watt True Power.

The system BIOS is reporting 12.18 volts and my meter shows 12.20 volts on an unused power connector, so the BIOS is reading a little low.

At the connectors feeding the 4 RAID drives the minimum voltage is ~12.13 volts with a peak reading of ~12.16 volts during a run of the SANDRA disk benchmark tool.

All of them are running cool and quiet, but then they are Maxtor D740X fluid bearing drives. Gawd....I love those things.

Dr. Mordrid

[Wombat]

Get a grip Fav. Your weight comparison is pretty useless. A couple of Watts CANNOT account for a that much of a difference. Even if a HD was the shittiest Carnot engine in the world, it can't throw more waste heat than it takes in as power.

The IBM failures wouldn't be nearly so bad if they didn't do things like reduce the 120gxp's specs, and stop their cross-shipment of replacements. It wasn't their (high) failure rate that was nearly as bothersome as their sudden lack of customer support.

[Dr Mordrid]

Ok...got some temp readings off the RAID0 during a SANDRA HDD bench run. Measuired by digital probe at the top/center of the drive.

Four Maxtor D740X's give low temp of 40 C (104F) and a peak of 43C (109.4F) on one of the center pair in the stack. Just a few deg. north of body temperature....

Temp testing them in a RAID0 stack during a benchmark is probably the worst case scenario for HDD's because all of 'em are active at once due to the interleaved reads & writes.

Dr. Mordrid

[fav]

Wombat, you got me.

How much volts deviation out of specs enough to ramble off into a digression?

Refer to standards (or specs), please.

With love, yours trully,
fav.