IBM's Travelstar and Deskstar hard drives are the subject of numerous failure reports. Most users state that the drives fail with a "clicking" noise, generally when applying an incremental update to Mac OS X (including the recent 10.2.3 release). Among the complaints:
- "I work for a support company that supports about 3000 Macs and the IBM Deskstars are affectionately known as IBM Deathstars because we have replaced so many of them."
- "My IBM Deskstar 75GXP recently died when I installed Mac OS X 10.2.2."
- "At our location, we had about 20 percent of the 15GB DeathStar drives (as we liked to call them) fail with hardly any warning. In some cases I was lucky enough to get the drive to mount one more time to get the data off."
- "The first IBM Deskstar failed under OS X 10.1.5. Got the 'click of death and that's all she wrote. I had another brand new IBM Deskstar laying around so I installed that one (both 40 gig, internal IDE). That one lasted about two months. It currently won't mount in OS X, will mount in OS 9 but will hang the system when certain folders are accessed"
The law firm of Sheller, Ludwig & Badey's has posted an IBM 75GXP Class Action Press Page, which contains a selection of articles on the problems users have had with the 75GXP and on the litigation against IBM. The firm says "We hope that these articles will provide a clearer picture of the nature and extent of the problem with the 75GXP and help to more fully explain the litigation against IBM."
A separate page indicates that cases are currently pending in California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Possible solutions: Some users have had success using an externally powered FireWire hub, or using AC power instead of power from the FireWire bus. Apparently, some TravelStar/DeskStar drives are not getting enough power through the Mac they are connected to, and require an added energy boost.
Feedback on this issue? Drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Resources
Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to read. Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion.