IBM Hard drive 73 GB

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

...complaining about their IBM drives dying. I even had a friend with a 60 GB model whose drive died after only a year. Possibly I'm lucky my drive hasn't died yet, but also there could be a reason for it.... These models of drive, marketed by IBM as "Deskstar", soon earnt the nickname "Deathstar" on many a website. With seemingly many people's replacement drives also dying and people generally getting very annoyed that IBM had turned out rather a dodgy lot of hard disks. A year ago IBM released a firmware update that's supposed to fix the cause of the failures, which was to do with the way the hard drive head idled. The firmware fix simply moves the head around every now and again to prevent the problem (now my hard drive might have survived because it's accessing the disk so often). I'm sure a lot of people don't know there was a firmware update... Read review

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Advantages: Big, fast, fairly quiet. + CHEAP
Disadvantages: IDE?

...OK...This is a very large and cheap hard drive. What can I say but IBM have done a superb job with this set of hard drives. The Deskstar 75GXP series all run at 7200rpm via IDE connection, and I think capacities from 20Gb to 65Gb. This 30Gb drive I'm reviewing here is an excellent upgrade. I upgraded from a 6Gb hard drive which had UDMA33 Connection, and a 5200rpm. Performance differences between my old drive and this IBM one is not dramatic but noticeable. For one thing it can make applications run a lot faster, and due to its higher rpm, it can process and save files slightly quicker. What I am amazed about is the quietness of it, there is a noise as you turn it on, but after it has initiated it you cannot hear it spinning, unless your computer has no fans...even the power supply fan which is really quiet drowns out the sound... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Silent, Large capacities
Disadvantages: Expensive

...The DTLA-307075 shares exactly the same specs as its smaller 45 gig brother, save only capacity. Both drives feature 7200rpm spindle speeds, 8.5 millisecond seek times, 15 gigs per platter, and a 2 megabyte buffer. The standout for the 75 gig model is, well, it's 75 gig capacity. Packing 5 platters into a single one-inch high profile, this 75GXP is currently the highest-capacity drive around, ATA or SCSI. It even edges out 1.6" high models such as the Cheetah 73 or Atlas 10k II 73. In 1999, it took the 5400rpm Deskstar 37GP to edge out the leading 36 gig SCSI drive… and this was in September, no less. Overall I am very impressed with this drive. It is fast, fairly silent despite the high speeds and the capacity support is nothing short of amazing.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful