Re: [Thinkpad] Hard Drive Buys and Don'ts

OK, you made me jump in.
IBM laptop drives, especially those previously provided by Hitachi, are
DEATHSTARS. The HItachi drives are prone to sudden death. No warning, they
just drop dead. The IBM branded drives are NOTORIOUS for bad bearing whines,
rendering them unsellable (and in many cases un usable anyplace but
outdoors).
I am of course referring to the 4, 6.4, 10, and 12 gig drives. I have also
encountered 32 gig 5400 drives that felt like they were going to shake
apart. And, I personally had a 48 gig 5400 that did sudden death.
I ONLY buy Tosihba drives now. So far, no bad noise problems, none I have
bought in two or three years have died.
And the prices are quite competitive.
As I do this for re-sale, and might have to eat a bad drive, this is not a
scientific exercise for me. Stick with the Toshiba drives.
Years ago, I bought new Toshibas that had IBM drives factory installed, and
I have seen many brands of drives with FRU numbers (Sigma, Fujutsu, others).
IBM buys and supplies what is available, most likely there ARE Toshiba
drives supplied in IBM laptops from time to time.
Just my two cents.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony R. Gold" <thinkpadlist@ahjg.co.uk>
To: "Thinkpad Mailing List" <thinkpad@stderr.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] Hard Drive Buys and Don'ts

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 15:40:01 -0000 (GMT), Larry Silberstein wrote:

> Gosh, Tony, pardon me for living. :) I didn't realize I'd get the third
> degree here for trying to share my information. There was a posting either
> here or in another forum from a Thinkpad repair shop owner who said he
> frequently was called upon to replace Thinkpad hard drives. He said that
> in his experience Hitachi was not terribly reliable but that Toshiba
> seemed to be the most reliable (the one least frequently needing
> replacement).

My own anecdote is that several of the Thinkpads I'm using came with IBM
supplied Hitachi drives but not one had an IBM supplied Toshiba. If that
observation is an accurate reflection of how IBM supplies computers (and I
have no separate knowledge of this one way or the other) then it would
predict what you recall was claimed by that shop owner but without
implying anything interesting or useful about relative reliability [other
than IBM approves of Hitachi drives - which itself is quite interesting.]

> I understand the difference between scientific data and anecdotal data,
> but until one sees such a scientific study one can only refer to
> andecdotal information. The alternate is to go with sheer pot luck.

Drives are complex mechanical devices and I advise anyone to use them with
the full expectation that they definitely all WILL eventually die, with
all that that implies about making backups and keeping good track of both
purchasing records and warranty information.

Tony

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Received on Wed Sep 1 21:31:44 2004