stevelarrison's Full Review: IBM Deskstar 60GXP 60 GB ATA-100 Hard Drive
As a long time computer person, I have always associated the name IBM with quality. Though the first machine I ever programmed was an Apple II , the first serious work I ever did was all on IBM mainframes. When IBM entered the PC marketplace, the platform was immediately given the credibility necessary to make professionals take the platform seriously.
In the disk drive arena, IBM was one of the first vendors that was selling 7200 RPM IDE disk drives, and they earned the reputation as being one of the better manufacturers. (At one point, IBM was manufacturing the 20GB 7200 RPM disk drives for Western Digital).
As someone who bought 6 20GB 7200 IBM drives that are still running flawlessly today, I had no problem trusting my data to IBM. When I needed something with a little more space than my reliable 20GB drives could offer, I look at various 60GB drives. (The Western Digital Special Edition drives with 8MB buffers were not available at that time)
One look at the spec convinced me that IBM offered the best price/performance available in that class of harddrives.
Based on a configuration of 3 20GB platters, the Deskstar 60GXP offered a very high data density that minimized the distance that read/write heads would have to move to get to the right spot on disk, and also minimized the surface area that would have to be read to retrieve or write data.
With a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM's, it offered speed that worked well in conjunction with the data density.
And the numbers showed too.
This drive offered an Average Seek Time of 8.5ms during an era when most of the competition was hitting 9.5ms. The Average Track-to-track Seek Time of 1.2ms and Average Full Stroke Seek Time of 15ms were also very competitive.
Benchmarks showed that it could easily outperform the Western Digital Caviar (WD200BB), Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60, Seagate Barracuda ATA III, and Quantum Fireball Plus AS.
In short, it offered everything that you could want in a hard drive. Looking around at places like Fry's Electronics, you can find incredible prices on these drives.
There is only one problem with this drive, and it is a very big problem.
Reliability
I own 2 60GB IBM 60GXP hard drives. One died after about 6 months. While it is very easy to assume that, I can't even begin to estimate how many people I know from computer hardware forums who have had 60GXPs suffer premature deaths on them.
While the class action lawsuit over shoddy quality on the IBM 75GXP line of drives has not been extended to the 60GXP line of drives, ancedotal evidence implies that this is a good product to avoid to. (Go to Google and do a search on +60GXP +died or +60GXP +reliability and you will get a disturbing number of hits)
What should I do if I already have one?
Well, the first thing I would do is download a copy of a very helpful utility from IBM called Smart Defender. Since IBM has sold their hard drive line to Hitachi, you can now find it on the Hitachi site at http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm . Set up SmartDefender to run at least once every two days. In the case of my drive failure, Smart Defender was able to let me know about the problem about a week before things got really bad. This allowed me time to get a replacement drive and move my data off the bad drive. The bad drive died a few days later, but it was no longer a primary drive in the machine it was in, so there was no data loss.
Secondly, if you do have a 60GXP, and if you may want to consider getting an additional hard drive and only storing things you aren't worried about losing on your 60GXP. I use my remaining 60GXP to store MP3s on. Sure, it will be a pain re-ripping MP3s from all of my CDs if/when the 60GXP I have dies, but it won't be a critical loss.
Conclusion
If you are in the market for a harddrive, I suggest you look elsewhere. Western Digital makes a very nice line of drives with 8MB buffers that will outperform the 60GXP line of drives. Starting at 80GB for about $100, it is a good option.
If that is out of your budget, I can recommend the Seagate Barracuda line of hard drives.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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