IBM Deskstar 80 GXP Hard Drive Disappeared!

Question

Hi.   I have a Dimension XPS T500 w/768MB RAM.  I have BIOS version A11.  I added an IBM Deskstar 80 GXP internal IDE ATA100 hard drive about a year ago.  I partitioned the drive and had Win98SE on the C: partition and WinXP (SP2) on the D:.  I set up two other partitons for data.  FYI, I primarily used XP; I almost never booted to 98.  I also got a Promise 100 Ultra IDE card, since I kept my original Dell HD.  Due to location issues w/in the tower I had the two hard drives plugged into separate IDE slots on the IDE card and my two CD/DVD drives daisy chained into one of the IDE ports on the motherboard.  Both hard drives were jumpered to cable select.   Yesterday the system became very slow and would then freeze unexpectedly.  The third time it happened (after I restarted twice within a very short period of time) I got a message saying 'Operating System Not Found.'  I rebooted and accessed the BIOS menu and the IBM drive was not listed.  I began to troubleshoot, but had little initial success and had to get some sleep.  When I booted up today, after the whole system had been powered down for several hours, I went immediately into system BIOS.  The IBM drive was there but when I tried to boot from it I got the 'OS not found' message.  I have tried all possible configurations of cables, with/without IDE card, with/without old Dell drive, and nothing seems work.  Both the motherboard and the card see the old Dell drive when it is attached, but the IBM drive never consistently shows up.  As I said, it will appear if I let it sit powered down for some time, but it is still very unstable.  I have been unable to run any diagnostics on the IBM drive because the computer doesn't see it  for any length of time.   As far as I can remember I did not install any new software recently.  I used Norton Internet Security and I thought I was very vigilant about keeping my system virus-free.  Do I have a bad HD?  Is there any way to recover/fix it?  Please help!! Thanks!   Gideon.

shesagordie · Answer

gman1234.   It sounds like the 'DeathStar' hard drive has failed and should be replaced.   Bev.

joe_Trunk · Answer

I had the same HDD, but it was a 40gb, those drives are bad news (old news) this was back in 2001 as I have learned. IBM had major quality control issues and virtually all those drives are problematic. My drive, luckily, lasted until I recently replaced it.

where did you get th 'deathstar'? just replace it and save yourself a 'pita', hopefully it sounds like you didn't have too much data on it....

ejn63 · Answer

What model drive is it - the two series known as Deathstarts are the 60GXP and 75GXP. The 120GXP and later models are fine, reliability wise.

joe_Trunk · Answer

@ejn63 wrote: What model drive is it - the two series known as Deathstarts are the 60GXP and 75GXP. The 120GXP and later models are fine, reliability wise. model IC35L040AVER07-0 ( 60 GXP )

se7en5ive2 · Answer

IBM/Hitachi DeckStars (a.k.a. DeathStars) are garbage in any size IMHO. I've had two IBM 80 die under normal situations within the warranty periods and IBM has never made good on the warranties of either drive. Hitachi was, and still is, the manufacturer of the IBM drives in question and the only thing that has changed was the removal of the IBM label with the drives now being marketed under the Hitachi name. Stay away from them!! Go with Western Digital, SeaGate and Maxtor; I have yet to have any of these drives fail that are installed in machines at home and at work that weren't replaced with no questions asked and RMA numbers issued as soon as requested. NewEgg has some great bargains on drives right now with 200Gb drives for around $120 for the three names I listed.      Twice burned by IBM with their drives has definitely made me choose better brands that may cost more, but they stand behind their products.                                                                                                7

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