IBM Solid state drive 15.8 GB

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

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Great value for money
Disadvantages: Only ATA100

...IBM/Hitachi are very well known for their quality hard drives, well at least up until their 120GXP range which had abnormally high returns rates within a few short months of purchase but thankfully the problems they had with the 120GXP have been ironed out in their 180GXP range. I have had my 120Gb 180GXP for around 5 months now and the only problem I have had with it was last week when it suffered a bad sector that prevented me from booting but was sorted out no problems using Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test utility. I have my hard drive split into 3x40Gb partitions (which I soon regretted due to the amount of data I have). With quick access rates it proves a great drive, especially with its 8Mb of cache and is also fairly quiet which is what most people need these days with them being left running for longer periods of time... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

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

...of the hard drive. You can, however, hear some sound when you are doing intense hard disk activity, such as saving a huge file, or defragging. The Deskstar 75GXP 30.7Gb has UDMA100, though I only have UDMA66, it will still be useful when I upgrade my motherboard. It's access time is 8.5ms which is pretty good now. There are new IBM technoligies which minimise problems, including SMART capabilities. You can download certain programs from the IBM website which you can run in the background and can monitor for errors in your hard drive. Due to its huge capacity I do recommend partitioning your hard drive, you can use IBM's supplied software or DOS's fdisk. I tried the IBM software, but I found it difficult to make it recognise it as a FAT32 file system, so I used Fdisk instead. Setting it up is quite easy. Partitioning just splits your hard... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful