Ldlc.fr, a french online shop, has just posted its hard drives RMA statistics for the last six months. The numbers inside brackets are the number of samples sold :

7200 rpm 80 GB IDE hard drives :

- IBM 120GXP : 2.73% (586)
- IBM 180GXP : 3.26% (1780)
- Maxtor DM+9 2 MB : 1.63% (6399)
- Maxtor DM+9 8 MB : 3.08% (260)
- Seagate ATA V : 1.7% (1500)
- Seagate ATA V SATA : 0% (272)
- Western WD800JB : 0.98% (410)
- Western WD800BB : 1.63% (1593)

7200 rpm 120 GB IDE hard drives :

- IBM 180GXP 2 MB : 1.71% (934)
- IBM 180GXP 8 MB : 2.2% (726)
- Maxtor DM+9 2 MB : 1.5% (2193)
- Maxtor DM+9 8 MB : 1.76% (560)
- Seagate ATA V 2 MB : 0% (194)
- Seagate ATA V 8 MB : 0.98% (204)
- Seagate ATA V SATA 8 MB : 1.96% (102)
- Western WD1200BB : 2.3% (408)
- Western WD1200JB : 2.94% (174)

7200 rpm 200 GB IDE hard drives :

- Maxtor DM+9 8 MB : 8.7% (138)
- Western WD2000JB : 0% (100)

I suppose "Seagate ATA V" includes the 7200.7 models. Good news, not only are the Seagates quiet, it looks like they are also very reliable. I must be unlucky, as both my 120GB and 60GB Seagates ATA V are defective.

Anyway, looks like the 200GB Maxtor is the loser here .

yeah, they seem tobe pretty reliably across the board

The site you cite is notoriously a member of a chain of french mail order resellers that look consistently trying to disparage IBM (now Hitachi) HDs. Yes IBM seem to have had some troubles but I have ~20 HDs mostly IBM (desktop IBM HDs from 6.4 to 120 GB, notebook IBM HDs 6 and 30 GB), several running 24/7, and had never a problem.

I also appreciated much Conner, even after they were bought by Seagate, and currently have 4 Seagate Barracuda (1 BIV-40G, 1 BIV-80G, 2B7200.PATA-80G), thus all with AAM. I take them as main HD for their silence and despite their (small) drawbacks:

• Their actual capacity, for the same amount announced, is ~7% under competitors.
• When plugged on my Maxtor ATA-100/PCI card, the two BIV had read/write errors, so I must plug them to the integrated IDE controller on the mobo. This is not a problem for me since I can always put the IBM on the Maxtor card, to free a slot for the BIV (my new B7200.7PATA seem to not have that flaw)

I keep IBMs for reliability though.

I am also questionning current HDs from either makers (IBM, Seagate, Maxtor) for their chosing air or vapor Bearings against Ball Bearings, officially for silence purposes - may be for cost reasons too. I would prefer Ball Bearing for long term reliability.

Paris, Mon 23 Jun 2003 11:09:20 +0200

Thank you for pointing this out Michel, I was not aware of this conspiracy . But do you really think these numbers depreciate IBM HDs ? I would tend to think that if ldlc is being unfair here, it's with the Maxtor DM+9 8 MB.

I don't know. But the DM+9 8MB is given a bad number only in the 200 GB variety; in 80 and 120 GB it gets better figures than the 180GXP 8 MB.

Paris, Mon 23 Jun 2003 12:18:35 +0200

I logged in right now to my account on StorageReview, and looked at
the reliability database. The numbers for the IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 60GXP
and the Deskstar 75GXP are completely catastrophic:

"A percentile score of 70 means according to filtered and analyzed results
from readers, the given drive is more reliable than 70% of the other drives
reviewed by StorageReview.com. [...] Note that an * means that the
family's sample size is too small to draw conclusions."

Deskstar 120GXP ---- First quarter 2002-------------- 88
Deskstar 14GXP ----- Second quarter 1998----------- 95
Deskstar 16GP ------ Second quarter 1998----------- 98
Deskstar 180GXP ---- Fourth quarter 2002----------- 23
Deskstar 22GXP ---- Second quarter 1999----------- 80
Deskstar 25GP ------ Second quarter 1999----------- 82
Deskstar 34GXP ---- Third quarter 1999-------------- 89
Deskstar 37GP ------ Third quarter 1999-------------- *
Deskstar 40GV ------ Second quarter 2000----------- 44
Deskstar 5 ----------- Fourth quarter 1997------------ *
Deskstar 60GXP ----- First quarter 2001-------------- 13
Deskstar 75GXP ----- First quarter 2000-------------- 19
Deskstar 8 ----------- Fourth quarter 1997------------- *
[SCSI snipped]

The Seagate drives:

Barracuda 18 --------- First quarter 1998 -------------- *
Barracuda 180 ------- First quarter 2001 -------------- *
Barracuda 18LP ------ Second quarter 1999 --------- 13
Barracuda 18XL ------ First quarter 2000 ------------ 21
Barracuda 36 --------- Second quarter 1999 --------- *
Barracuda 36ES2 ---- Second quarter 2002 ---------- *
Barracuda 4XL ------- Third quarter 1997 ------------ *
Barracuda 7200.7 ---- First quarter 2003 ------------- *
Barracuda 9LP ------- First quarter 1998 -------------- *
Barracuda ATA ------ Third quarter 1999 ------------- 77
Barracuda ATA II ---- First quarter 2000 ------------ 38
Barracuda ATA III --- Fourth quarter 2000 ---------- 63
Barracuda ATA IV --- Third quarter 2001 ------------ 88
Barracuda ATA V ---- Third quarter 2002 ------------ 93
[SCSI snipped]

I had two of these (IBM Deskstar 40GV DTLA-305040), one was
dead on arrival, and got RMA'd, the other went 1,5 years later
to HDD-nirvana. The replacement one now makes sounds like
the dead one before dying. of my twenty-something HDDs the only
ones dying were these two IBMs. Sure - i have a running Deskstar
120GXP IC35L080AVVA07, and the old SCSI-drives were also
reliable, but the 60/75GXP were IMHO complete crap.

"Yes IBM seem to have had some troubles" is a major understatement
if you meant the debacle with the 60/75GXP series. Try the "article"
section on this page: http://haque.net/dtla_update/

Or how about some googling:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... a=N&tab=iw

I've seen other testimonies of problems with the 60gxp and 75gxp serie. I myself own an IBM 60gxp, and have had many problems with this drive. But the numbers provided by Ldlc tend to prove that the new series perform very well in terms of reliability.