IBM hard drive Problem

[GT98]

Anyone have the 1-800 number to call IBM to get an RMA# for a Hard drive with bad sectors on it?

Thanks

Scott

[Guru]

Re: IBM hard drive Problem

Originally posted by GT98
Anyone have the 1-800 number to call IBM to get an RMA# for a Hard drive with bad sectors on it?

Thanks

Scott

I have 4 different # in Finland! 10% of there damn IDE drives we have sold in the last year have been fault right out of the box!!!!!

[cbman]

We have had a fairly high percentage of RMA units (Mainly Scanners and Hard Drives and Floppy Drives)

Its gone up alot in the past year... I hope companies aren't getting slack on quality control just because the value of components have dropped so much in the past year or two.

Gee I don't know any companies that do that

Sigh... oh well...

At least I am getting to know the companies sales reps that we deal with on a first name basis... Nice guys... most of them anyways

[Gurm]

Actually, I had a couple IBM drives with bad sectors, called up their RMA # and was told to PLEASE check them with the DFT (drive fitness test) first.

Lo and behold, when I ran the DFT, it fixed the "bad" sectors. Poof! Gone!

I asked the guy at IBM why this was, and he gave me some song and dance routine about MS's operating systems having "buffering bugs" that need "a patch" (which I can't find, of course).

Well, oops. I think that the GXP's just lose track of what they're doing sometimes. Heh.

So try the DFT first.

- Gurm

[Wombat]

Gurm,
It sounds like he was thinking of the too-fast shutdown. MS does have a "patch" on update for it.

It changes from Shutdown->Powerdown to Shutdown-(3 sec pause)->Powerdown.

Probably not the problem in your case though.

[Greebe]

I have noticed a little bug with my 60gig 60GXP

When the drive has spinned down (idle) and you attempt to save a file to it, it spins up and the file appears to have been saved... goto where you put it and it's not there... save again and all is fine. This has happened repeatedly and is reproducible.

[GT98]

Originally posted by Gurm

So try the DFT first.

- Gurm

Gurm,

Thats what told me I had the bad sectors on hard drive to begin with! It suggested as a "fix" to format hard drive! The DFT also spat out a couple error codes give tech support. If i have to reformat my Friends HD I rather get a new one because of my past experances with bad sectors...its like a cancer that keeps spreading!

I should have been a little bit more clearer with this...this is for a friends PC, not mine ! And I'm running Win2000 with SP2 so I dont have to worry about shut down problem with Win98..

Scott

[EdSki]

Gurm,

when I ran the DFT, it fixed the "bad" sectors

Did you have to do a format? And if so where the sectors free for use again or where they just marked as bad by format?

I have a feeling this is the fix that DFT proggy is intending to do in GT's case...that wouldn't really be a fix in my opinion

Grtz,
Ed

[Dr Mordrid]

Unfortunately this is a common problem. Storage Review's forum is loaded with horror stories about IBM 60 and 75 GXP drives produced in the last several months.

I'm just glad I got mine before the quality went to hell.

Dr. Mordrid

[dZeus]

weird thing is that of all drives sold through the computer parts shop I work at part-time, the IBM 60GXP isn't really returned more often than other drives as defective.. in fact, over the past 4 months, about the same amount of drives from all manufacturers were returned, and we sell IBM drives like at least 3 times as much as other drives (about 100 a week).

So either the current stories about these IBM drives failing are just hysteria, or the amoujnt of failed drives is higher because IBM sells more drives than other manufacturers (and the relative amount of failed drives isn't that much bigger, or even smaller), or we (the computer part shop) are just very lucky in getting very good batches of drives

[Greebe]

Or this trend we're now experiencing is unlike IBM drives of the past... and yes that in itself can cause hysteria regardless of the fact they are failing less often than the other manufactures drives.