IBM DVD-RAM drive

Advantages: Quite a fast drive.
Disadvantages: One of the "Deathstar" drives.

...Whether you are thinking of buying this drive (2nd hand, most likely as it's a couple of years old) or own one of IBM's 60GXP, 75GXP or 120GXP models, read on for important information about issues with these drives and fixing them. ** THE DRIVE ** Capacity: 40 GB (38.3 GB as reported in windows) Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM Interface: ATA-100 Average seek time: 8.5 ms It's a fast enough drive. It seems to perform quite a bit better than the 5400 rpm 45 GB Western Digital drive I had, it's quite a bit quieter and this one's not dead ... yet. ** BORROWING NAMES FROM STAR WARS ** The main reason I thought I'd write a review on this drive, is to hopefully help a few others who have this or one of the other 60GXP, 75GXP or 120GXP models (as I've read these are equally affected). It didn't take long for a lot of people... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, especially DVD-RAM, reads and writes everything
Disadvantages: No lightscribe

...The LG GSA H22N Super-Multi is one of the first drives to up the maximum speed to 18X for DVD writing. Whilst not a huge increase on the 16X drives, it's a welcome boost. The various speeds and media types supported are: Read speed: 48x (CD) / 16x (DVD) Write speed: 48x (CD) 18x (DVD±R) 8x (DVD±R DL) Rewrite speed: 32x (CD) 6x (DVD-RW) 8x (DVD+RW) 12x (DVD-RAM) Far more of interest is the support for DVD-RAM which many consider a superior format for data archival due to its built in error correction. Until recently DVD-RAM trailed badly in speed terms but this drive provides an astonishing 12X writing for DVD-RAM. If you are creeating DVD's for long term backup or archival then DVD-RAM... Read review

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Advantages: Consistently fast, reliable, quiet
Disadvantages: none (that I know of)

...This is a great drive, that I bought about a year ago when I built my PC. I was looking for a good all round IDE hard disk - fast, reliable, and well priced. After reading various reviews, I discovered the best hard disk in its class. Was it a Maxtor? WD? Seagate? No - it was made by IBM. >Price< The drives are selling in many places, such as dabs.com. The DeskStar line is extremely well priced, so price/performance ratio is excellent here if you are on a budget. >Performance< I am a musician and I use digital audio/recording applications. These can be very hard-disk intensive, and the Deslstar 120GXP performs brilliantly. I also have a firewire-capable digital camcorder so I use the PC to edit digital video which is also very hard-disk intensive. Again, the drive performs competently. Seek times and transfer rates are top... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful