On December 6, 2002, IBM departed the hard drive business with a whimper. IBM Deskstar drives were among the best drives in the industry. Licensing Deskstar technology from IBM in 1999 saved Western Digital. But we don’t call IBM hard drives Deskstars anymore. We call them death stars. It was all because of one misstep IBM made right around the turn of the century.
IBM desk star? More like death star
IBM hard drives were great, until 75GXP model, and to a lesser degree, the 60 GXP model. IBM drives were fast. They were reliable. And despite carrying a premium name, their price was competitive. IBM used the drives in their own computers, but they also sold their drives to competitors, who eagerly used them. The rule of fast, reliable, cheap: pick 2 applies to technology as much as it applies to anything. So when IBM offered all three and it held up for multiple generations, the drives proved popular even with people who wouldn’t dream of buying one of IBM’s computers.
But IBM’s reputation took a beating with the 75 GXP drives. The failure rate on the 75 GXP was the worst in the industry for its generation. The poor reliability of the 75 GXP also caused enthusiasts to take another look at the 60 GXP. Rumors that the 60GXP was also not up to previous IBM standards persisted until the drives were obsolete.
Specifically, the magnetic media on the 75GXP platters was prone to flake off, and it was only a matter of time before some of the debris got caught up in the drive heads, causing massive head crashes. A 75GXP drive would make an audible click when the debris, head, and platter came into contact, then never work again. The similar IBM 40GV drive, which used the same platters but spun them at a slower 5400 RPM rather than 7200 RPM, was reliable.
In the interest of full disclosure, in early 2001, before the problems surfaced, the 75GXP was the hard drive I recommended people buy. The reason was simple. It was inexpensive and it was the fastest drive on the market.
The IBM death star lawsuit
On October 16, 2001, Michael Granito Jr filed a class action lawsuit against IBM over the Deskstar 75GXP’s reliability. Without admitting responsibility, IBM settled the lawsuit in 2005, agreeing to pay $100 to every user whose Deskstar 75GXP drives had failed.
The IBM Deskstar drives after the 75GXP
IBM righted the ship with its 120GXP drive, which was reliable. But the reputational damage was done, and the profit margins on hard drives were sinking. So it’s easy enough to understand why IBM chose to cut its losses and sell the product line to Hitachi for $2.05 billion.
Hitachi drives after the IBM purchase were the best in the industry, every bit is good as earlier IBM drives, or maybe even better. Hitachi eventually departed the industry as well, selling the business to Western Digital. Yes, the same company that had licensed Deskstar technology back in 1999.
As part of the agreement, regulators required Western Digital to operate the former Hitachi business as a subsidiary, rather than doing a full integration. Western Digital sold the subsidiary-produced drives under the brand name HGST. HGST drives retained an excellent reputation, better than Western Digital itself, until Western Digital wound down the brand in 2020.
Were all IBM hard drives that bad?
Today, when I watch a YouTube video where someone is refurbishing an old PC, if they find an IBM drive in the computer, chances are they will make a comment about the death star, regardless of whether it is a 75 GXP drive or not. At this point in time, any 20 or 30-year-old hard drive is running on borrowed time. But IBM drives from before the 60 GXP were excellent. I would trust an IBM drive from that era more than I would trust Seagate or Western Digital. At the time, I preferred Quantum drives, but the rubber parts inside Quantum drives didn’t age well. So a pre-60 GXP IBM drive is probably about as good as you are going to get from any given generation today.
But unfortunately, the 75GXP ruined the reputation of pretty much any Deskstar-branded IBM 3.5-inch hard drive.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
i owned a IBM hard drives and yes they’re not good
I never had any problems with IBM drives, over the decades I was a PC enthusiast I had many trouble free drives and a few duds from most of the major brands. I knew people that swore by one brand or insisted another brand was junk but really most companies made a lot of solid drives and a few models that just didn’t hold up. Companies that made too many flaky drives didn’t last long.
I had one of these, while living in Paris, and it died of course. I sent away for a warranty replacement and it arrived in a package several times the size of the disk drive unit itself, with the drive suspended in the middle of the package by a really cool multi-axis shock absorber system made of plastic.