SEAGATE or IBM?

[Guest]

>>The part about "better than the IBM 75 GXP such as this Seagate model" was not reiterated.<<

Notice genious, that the above part is not marked in my previous post. I marked and separated the part that has been reiterated. Do you need it in red lettering to notice this? In fact if you'll read the entire thread, you will see the drives in question are clearly stated.. and there should be no confusion.. nor should I have to repeat myself, even though I tried to be nice about it.

>>The whole thread has the title of "Another Bad IBM Hard Drive!!!!"<<

point?

>>and while multiple manufacturers are referred to, it is a very long thread with about 100 posts in a storage enthusiast community that overwhelmingly points to IBM having a quality control problem<<

15... I counted around 15 original posts out of a 100 that complained about a problem with IBM drives and/or the 75GXP specifically. That's overwhelming? I'm sure there are close to that many in the same thread claiming they have had no problems with the drive. You need me to count those for you too? I know you're having problems reading entire threads.

>>(something Seagate has excelled at) <<

Not anymore than IBM.. anything else said to the contrary is pure and utter BS. Opinion is one thing.. stating opinion as fact is another.


***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Guest]

Sorry this is long, but I thought it would better prove my point.
<font color=green>"I meant better than the IBM 75 GXP such as this Seagate model. Since I'm reiterating what I've already said in this thread, I didn't expect that to be confused." </font color=green>
As you can see, the part about <font color=green>"better than the IBM GXP such this Seagate model"</font color=green> was not marked and seperated from the part reiterated, but who cares? It was all about your statement <font color=red>"if all you care about is pure STR, there are some better performing IDE drives</font color=red><i>(than what? hadn't been specified until later leading us to believe at that time you meant there was hard drives with better STR than both drives in question, the 75GXP and Cuda III)</i><font color=red>."</font color=red> There is only one IDE hard drive with better STR than the IBM 75GXP, the Seagate Barracuda ATA III. And there is no IDE hard drive with a better STR than the Cuda ATA III.

<font color=red>"point?"</font color=red>
The whole thread is about bad IBM hard drives.

<font color=red>"15... I counted around 15 original posts out of a 100 that complained about a problem with IBM drives and/or the 75GXP specifically. That's overwhelming?</font color=red>
Here are some random quotes. To me this is pretty overwhelming:
<i>"We just received 4 45 GB 75GXP drives (model DTLA-307045). <b>All four were dead within a few hours.</b>" "I have also had problems with a 20 GB 75GXP that has about 4gb of bad sectors" "My 75GXP 40GB failed within MINUTES" "Also I know the IBM drives get hot too, because they can read and write so damn fast. Especially with RAID." "All I have to say is that IBM's 75GXP SUCKS. I have had problems in Win98, as well as Windows 2k." "I have a power supply rated 250W and all latest drivers yet I developed a bad sector on a 30.7GB 75GXP.....I think I have to resign to fate and count myself unlucky to fall into the statistics of failed/defective product by IBM" "We have never problems with HDDs. This year we have (only 7200 ATA comparison, we don't sell 5400, also no problems with SCSI) one bad Quantum LM from 100, one WD Caviar from 20, and now <b>six IBM's 75GXP from 10 !!!!!!!!!!!</b>" "sigh, mine too, today I rebooted my computer into windows to play some counter-strike, when i booted back into linux the system failed to start up. My 30 gig ibm 75gxp made a grinding sound while trying to read a specific, but vital part of the hard drive. I suspect it's bad sectors, gonna go download the fitness test and see what happens...<b>before this I got a defective 30 gig ibm 75gxp that failed within 10 minutes</b>. I returned it to buy.com and got my current hard drive." "From my experience with hard drives at work (several enterprise voice mail and messaging servers, as I work for a large telecommunications company) I conclude that <b>Seagate Barracudas and Cheetahs are among the most reliable drives in the world.
In the last five (5) years we had the following failures:
Out of 200 cudas ST34371 two (2) died since 1996 i.e 1% failure rate
Out of 200 cudas ST34572 three (3) died since 1997 i.e 1.7% failure rate
Out of 300 cudas ST34573 one (1) died since 1998 i.e 0.3% failure rate
Out of 300 cheetahs ST19102 none died since 1998 i.e 0% failure rate.</b>
I can't tell you about any other brand as we only use Seagate drives in all our servers." "I have had my hands on 5 IBM drives:
a 16GP 10GB (IDE)
a 22GXP 13.5GB (IDE)
a ??GP 8.4 GB (IDE)
a ??GB 15.3GB (IDE)
a 9ES 4.3GB (SCSI)
<b>The 10GB developed bad sectors after 1½ years use, with a few regular LANparties down the road. The 13.5GB drive sometimes got a 'cramp'</b>, so the drive-arm would swing from one side to the other, making a hefty clicking sound, and it finally went dead before the warranty was void, but I got it replaced, the replacement took 3 days." "<b>I've had two 75 GXPs go bad on me, back to back.</b>" "I built a system with two 30GB GXPs in June. Within a few weeks, one of the drives had developed a ton of bad sectors." "I've had my fair share of problems with them, <b>got both a 30Gb and a 45Gb drive and both failing.</b>" "I ORDERED 75GXP 30 GB FROM OUTPOST.COM. THE FIRST WAS BAD WITH ERRORS AND MADE A VERY WEIRD SOUND. <b>THEY SENT ME ANOTHER ONE THE NEXT DAY, IT WAS BAD TOO, NOT AS MUCH BUT STILL BAD</b>" "I've had this problem with a 75GXP 15 GB. <b>The first drive crashed with less than 4 months use.</b> I did the drive fitness test and had it reformat the drive. About 2 weeks later it crashed again" "I have a three month old IBM 15G 74GXP which which developed a bad sector right in the boot sector" "Over two months ago, my 75GXP 45 GB harddrive failed and was replaced by IBM, shipping at my expense. The drive was only 6 weeks olds. Well now, <b>my replacement hard drive failed after only two months</b>"</i>

<font color=red>"I'm sure there are close to that many in the same thread claiming they have had no problems with the drive.'</font color=red>
Even if only 50 percent of the people in that thread had no problems with IBM drives, that doesn't look very good to me.

 

[Guest]

>>There is only one hard drive with better STR than the IBM 75GXP, the Seagate Barracuda ATA III.<<

Hang on to that one.. cause it's about the only thing you got going for you.

>>The whole thread is about bad IBM hard drives.<<

No it's not.. Read it again if you need to.. you'll find many topics raised beyond just bad IBM hard drives. I'll repeat this also, the only good thing out of that thread is the mention of MS IDE patch for 98SE and new drivers for ATA 66/100 controllers. I can assure you of one thing.. if power is shut off to a drive while it's writing data from cache you will have serious problems eventually. The rest of it is just an Orson Wells montage against IBM. No matter how much you quote from those 15 or so posts it doesn't further strengthen them (they are a small percentage of the amount of drives sold). They are there.. we can read. Any intelligent and objective reader will see this and know you can not define the reliability of drive from one thread!! and certainly not 15 posts from one thread of a 100. TRUST ME on this one.. there have been seagate drives suffer the same fates as the ones described out of those posts. I still don't use that as a definition of Seagate's reliability.

You make one claim that you can not prove ..you do not have the data to make..

>>just that Seagate's drives are of better quality.<<

You have to prove this, otherwise that is an opinion based on personal experience, which is fine. Please don't come back and say I'm not stating fact.. because yes you are. But it still doesn't make it the truth about qaulity between IBM and Seagate. I don't have those numbers, and you won't see me make those claims about IBM or Seagate. I go as far as saying I believe they both make quality drives, which is probably about as far as YOU can go.

>>Even if only 50 percent of the people in that thread had no problems with IBM drives, that doesn't look very good to me.<<

Another example of opinion. Thank you for that.. now we all know what Alpha's opinion is. That Seagate drives are of better quality than IBM. Just 2 more cents in the bowl. Still not fact ..nor anything against IBM drives.






***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[yoda271828]

I think most of those people complaining about their bad IBM drives have bigger problems than just bad drives. One guy claims to have recieved four 75GXPs and have all four fail within hours. You can't honestly believe that that was IBM's fault. That was probably the result of a bad power supply, or poor handling of the drives, or shipping damage, etc..

Most of the time Tom uses a 30GB 75GXP in his test setups. If he ever had a problem with IBM, he would definitely have something to say about it.

I don't think that forum thread is a fair sampling. If IBM really had quality control issues that severe why would they still be in the hard drive market. IBM drives come with a three year warantee (same as Seagate). That means that they are very confident that the hard drives that they ship out the door are very high quality. If there were that many bad drives that had to be returned, then IBM would be losing a great deal of money in their hard drive segment. They would probably recall all the 75GXP drives to prevent the loss of more money, but oh look, their drives are still selling strong.

IBM has a great reputation for high quality hard drives and the 75GXP is no exception.

 

[Fa1c0n]

I'll toss in my thoughts as well I guess.

I <i>personally</i> have installed/serviced over 400 PCs with different brands of drives. Out of those, I have not had one problem with Seagate, and only one problem with an IBM, but I have had a couple dozen of Western Digital drives die on me (all IDE, different models). This is not quite an easy comparison though, becuase most of the drives out of that "over 400" were Western Digital (like about 60-70%). Still, though I am convinced that WD IDE drives are pretty low on the quality scale (don't know enough about their SCSI models), and my personal favorite is Seagate. Although I have been thinking seriously about getting an IBM for my home PC as my next HD. I like both. That's my honest opinion.

As far as actual experience on large numbers of PCs I can say that Seagate has so far been fantastic for me, WD has been crappy. I haven't had a whole lot of IBMs but they have seemed fine so far, for the most part. I haven't tested the newest models of IBM drives.

Also, I really hate the "power saving" feature of windows that spins the drive down (what a bunch of eco-crap. unless it's on a laptop. It's kind of like water-saving toilets that have to be flushed 5 times to do the same job). The PCs that had it turned on had HD problems very frequently and died much more often. I heartily recommend turning it off on ALL desktops. For that matter I would not recommend having the monitor "turn off" setting at any less than 1 hour (I set mine a 2 hours. They are similar to light bulbs).

Hope that helps!


<b><font color=green> Have a day </font color=green></b>

 

[Guest]

The measure of quality goes beyond quality control and bad drives but in to acoustical, heat, and reliability areas as well. Seagate scored an exclusive contract with Minebea to be the only drive manufacturer to use the only proven dynamic fluid bearings in their drive motors. The Seagate Barracuda ATA III is the first drive to implement these bearings since the deal and it helps the Cuda III edge over the 75GXP in terms of quality (heat, acoustics, reliability). These bearings are soon to be implemented in high end drives as well.