IBM DVD-ROM 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

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Great for the time
Disadvantages: Old now :(

...with multimedia speakers made by Infinity, these were large but the sound actually was quite puny, you needed to turn the volume up high to hear anything. DVD ? What are you on about: This may shock and amaze you but DVD rom drive was extremely rare and CD RW didn’t exist, our IBM had a CD ROM drive which read the disks at an amazing 32x surpassing many inferior products. It also came with a 1.44 Inch Floppy drive capable of reading and writing 1.44 MB floppy disks. Plug That In: The PC came with keyboard and mouse and speakers, I loved the keyboard it was truly amazing with separate volume controls and customisable buttons. The mouse was pretty basic 2 buttons no strings attach.... well it did actually :P. The Infinity speakers where very big which makes them look impressive but they didn’t sound so great. Cant We Plug More In: We sure could... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

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