IBM Deskstar 120GXP 120GB DMA/ATA-100 EIDE user reviews (Ultra)

Cons Deskstars apparently have history of failure. on April 24, 2005 by Jack Toolin  | Read full review

Cons after a few months the "click of death" starts to happen. just started happening to me and it crashes 3 times a day. IBM wont replace even though its only a month out of warranty. bottom line DONT buy it because its cheap. buy a seagate! on January 12, 2005  | Read full review

Cons I work in the music industry and used my "trusty" ibm deskstar 80gb drive to store our production masters, after 8 months the drive just totally died resulting in me loosing my job. Aswell as this my boss filed a law suit against me and so far I've lost on March 5, 2004  | Read full review

Cons when it fails. Oh, and when the replacement drive fails also after being told the first one was "part of a bad batch". on November 10, 2003  | Read full review

Pros I've bought 4 IBM drives in total. 2 75gxp's and 2 120gxp's. 2 years ago, my friend and I both ordered the same 75GXP 40GB drives. His failed after year and a half, but mine has had no trouble what-so-ever. I am extremely happy with the drive. It is

Cons Noisy, but so are many others :) In my time I have seen more dead maxtor, than ibm drives. on September 3, 2003  | Read full review

Pros I have been editing video using a 120GXP 120gb drive for 10 months now. It hasn't failed on me but it does make these screetching noises at times. And it is a bit noisy (especially a high frequency annoys me). But from what i've heard that's not common.

Summary I've used roughly 10 IBM DeskStar drives ranging from 60GB to 120GB. For the longest time, it was the default drive that I used for building new machines at work. I started getting nervous after hearing bad experiences from others, so I switched to WD. Since then, I have had 6 WD drives fail, all within 6 months of purchase. The DeskStars are all still running without a problem. The youngest one is now 18 months.

Summary Hitatchi supports these drives now. They have stopped includeing software to copy your existing drives. The offical response from support is. "It is not recommended"

Summary These drives are great. The clicks are higher pitched and does not vibrate as much, so the noise is contained inside the case. I never really noticed how annoying the clicks were until I bought a Western Digital. Now my case is acting like a speaker box -- thump thump. I'm going to take my Western Digital drive out and add two more IBM's for a raid5 system!

Summary We are a data recovery company in Sweden. About 15 calls each day from defective IBM DeskStar users. Get smart. Change to Seagate while you can still read your data.

Summary I bought two drives and put them in raid mode 0 config. After about a month i started hearing a LOUD screeching sound that happened every so often. After another month every so often turned into every 20-30 minutes. After pumping so much money into the ibm hdds i was very angered to have to go out and replace them as they are on the brink of death. IBM should be flogged for this.

Summary i bought an ibm hard disk nov. 2000 and it scratched-of-death five months later, i had it replaced by another, identical one, which died a two day slow death yesterday and today, and i could do nothing but watch years of unbackuped stuff crossing the styx. i always backup big stuff, but small things like notes, small programs i use to write, bookmarks and notes are lost forever and it's quite a lot. it's my third ibm hard drive that just dies away and i have friends with similar problems.

Summary I don't care what people say about IBM hdds but all I know is that they are really great. in 1997, I bought a 2.1 GB IBM hdd. in 1998, I bought a 6.4 gb ibm hdd for the same pc (pII 266, 128 mb). That pc is still working as my gateway running linux. there even is not a bad sector on none of them. now, I'm using a 60 gb IBM on this computer that I bought a year ago. there isn't a problem. I carried the oldest 2.1 gb ibm hdd in my pocket to school or friends to copy data, etc. nothing happened. I really cannot believe when people talks about ibm harddisks like that. I've never had a problem. I had bought a 10.1 gb quantum for my brother because I couldn't find an IBM. it's been a little more than 3 years and the head is bouncing like a ball hitting somewhere. sometimes the pc does not even boot. it'll probably die soon. now, I need an extra hdd for my pc. no matter what people say, I'll go and buy this 120 gb hdd. ibm is the best hdd. that's what I think.

Summary I build computers for friends and family and have been in the IT industry for 10 years. I used to use the IBM 30GB hard drive exclusively because they offered speed and value, or so I thought. Be warned, these hard drives are not designed to last more than a year! Every IBM hard drive I installed within the past two years has failed. Do yourself a favor and get a Maxtor or Western Digital, these drives will last the test of time.

Summary Bought two, one died. Did not cover breather holes. Installed in an HUGE server case with plenty of ventilation. junk

Summary I have had a deskstar 20GB for about 3 months and it has been fine until a week ago (surprisingly) Now it will start up and run for about an hour, then makes the sound of a shovel being dragged across the pavement. or fingernails across a chalkboard. Before this I had a maxtor 1.4 GB HDD for about 6 years (had it since win 3.1 ) It still works, but doesn't have nearly enough space for modern progs. I also had 2 deskstar HDDs that only worked for a week before sending back. I am so F@#$ing sick of having to recover everything from my HDDs that I'm now using a Sony 120GB HDD partitioned and burninng everything on DVD-rw's That takes so much time, but whatever. I'm not gonna have to do all the work of recovering everything. (the most annoying thing in the world.) Recently I ripped apart my deskstar 12GB(in fury) and now use the disks as frisbees, except for one which I melted down for a knife mold.

Summary I have both 120GXP 120 GB and 80 GB hard drives, and they work great. Loud you say? No, I don't think so...quiet as a mouse. Your computer crashed running Windows "ME"? No way. Your two drives crashed at the same time? It's probably your motherboard or the way you installed it. People, let's learn to correctly use hardware before you dis it. Ignorance can obviously kill your hard drive.

Summary my 40gb drive broke last night after making that horrible noise. it wouldnt detect at startup. i was extrelemy angry becuase i hadnt backed up some of my recent work. this morning i tryed several more times, and it finally booted so i could make backups. lucky.... never again will i touch ANYTHING made by ibm. anyone with an ibm hard drive please back up your data!