The award-winning IBM Deskstar family provides industry-leading capacities and performance of up to 34 GB at 7200 RPM in 34GXP hard drive models. Average seek times of 9.0... more
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A review by kenigma on IBM Deskstar 34GXP 13.6 GB February 23rd, 2001
Author's product rating:
Memory / capacity
Excellent
Reliability
Good
Ease of Installation
Good - quick to install
Speed
Fast
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Cheap, good drive
Disadvantages:
No installation manual
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I bought an IBM Deskstar Hard Drive recently from Dabs.com (see opinion on that) and it seems to be pretty good. Unfortunately my machine is a year old, so hasn't got the motherboard to take full advantage of the data-transfer speeds offered by the IBM Deskstar.
The specs of the hard drive I got are:
45 gigabyte 7200 rpm (fast by most standards) UDMA 100 - fastest available transfer speed at the moment Average access time: 8.5 ms
The drive seems to perform fairly well but has lower access speeds than my existing HD, though this may be because it's sharing the IDE cable - not sure why.
All in all it's very good value for money (I only paid £130 or so), and the storage has been reliable so far, although I am disappointed about the data-transfer speeds.
*** Installing a Hard Drive
OK... now this is what I had problems with when I bought the HD. The physical installation was no problem at all - just a matter of unscrewing the casing and finding the spare drive bay.
After you have done that, you must locate a spare power lead (these are coloured wires with a small white plastic end bit. There should be a spare one of these coming off your existing drive.
Once you've done that you need to plug in the IDE cable. This is the flat grey ribbed cable. There should be a spare coming off both your existing HD and your CD-rom. I'd advise using the HD one for simplicity's sake.
Once all that's done, close the casing up, boot up the computer and get into the bios settings (usually by pressing Del during the initial startup).
The bios setup varies on different computers, but there should be an option to auto-detect a new HD, which it should do without a problem. This will be the primary slave drive if you've connected it to the HD IDE cable.
After this, log on, get into DOS (restart in dos from windows) and then type fdisk.
This is the program which allows you to partition the new hard drive and helps windows recognise it. Make ABSOLUTELY SURE you select the correct drive or you're liable to lose your entire existing HD's data.
You then have the option of sectioning the new drive into separate partitions, or leaving it all as one. If you're reading this you're probably just a basic home user like me and all you need is the space, so just make it a single partition.
Once that has completed, reboot and voila - your new HD appears in Windows.
Advantages: Fast, quite and huge Disadvantages: A little bit more expenisive.
...if you want a large, very fast, quite and relilible drive then there is only one choice its the IBM deskstar. Bad points might be a couple of quid more the the rest out there but totally worth it. Would recomened this to my most annoying users :) ...
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Drive Transfer Rate: 66.6 MBps (external) / 22.9 MBps (internal)
Seek Time: 9 ms (average) / 15.5 ms (max)
Track-to-Track Seek Time: 2.2 ms
Average Latency: 4.17 ms
Spindle Speed: 7200 rpm
Configuration
Bytes per Sector: 512
Reliability
Non-Recoverable Errors: 1 per 10^13
Start / Stop Cycles: 40,000
Expansion / connectivity
Connections: 1 x storage - ATA-66 - 40 PIN IDC
Compatible Bays: 1 x internal - 3.5" x 1/3H
Manufacturer's product description
The award-winning IBM Deskstar family provides industry-leading capacities and performance of up to 34 GB at 7200 RPM in 34GXP hard drive models. Average seek times of 9.0 milliseconds, with sustained data rates of up to 22.9 MB/sec (Deskstar 34GXP), a 2.0 MB cache, and high internal data rates enable benchmark-winning performance. An Ultra ATA/66 interface supports transfer rates of up to 66.7 MB/sec in Ultra DMA Mode-4. All models are designed to ensure data reliability across the interface with cyclic redundancy checking (CRC). IBM Deskstar hard drives make use of the latest IBM technologies, like IBM giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head technology, TrueTrack servo, and No-ID sector formatting. These technologies, along with an Ultra ATA/66 interface, deliver a high-performance, high-capacity hard drive with unsurpassed quality and reliability. IBM Drive Fitness Technologies, which is a set of diagnostic tools, includes the award-winning Drive Fitness Test (DFT), S.M.A.R.T. Self Test, and error logging.
Environmental parameters
Min Operating Temperature: 5 °C
Max Operating Temperature: 55 °C
Humidity Range Operating: 8 - 90%
Shock Tolerance: 10 g @ 11ms half-sine pulse (operating) / 75 g @ 11ms half-sine pulse (non-operating)
Vibration Tolerance: 0.67 g @ RMS (random) (operating) / 1.04 g @ RMS (random) (non-operating)
This MP3 layer is an insult to all other mp3 players out there which actually work. The thing constantly freezes up on you (upon which you have to restart it by pressing the volume up and power key together).
When it freezes the thing will keep... more
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