Thinkpads Forum

I have an IBM brand Travelstar hard drive (ATA/100/IDE type) for my Thinkpad, and was considering upgrading to a larger drive.
However, I am wondering if my real IBM drive is a superior and longer lasting than comparable drives by other manufacturers.

Don't think that long-term stats prove the IBM-branded drives were better or worse.

That said, I've kept with Travelstars even after IBM sold the line and name to Hitachi. I'm currently running them in all of my machines except the t43, which is till running an IBM FRU Travelstar drive because of the 2010 issue. The newest I'm running is an SATA 500gb 7200rpm HGST Travelstar in my t60p. It's one speedy and quiet drive. Couldn't be happier short of getting a big SSD.

During a certain era (maybe late 1990's or early 2000's?) the IBM-branded Hitatchi Travelstars were known amongst some users as "Deathstars" because they seemed to fail suddenly, and more frequently, than other drives. [Later edit: This is not correct, continue reading thread for full details.] I'm not sure if there are any actual failure statistics that back up this story, and I understand that the more recent Hitachi drives are better. But in any case, IBM and Lenovo don't actually manufacture drives, they just "brand" drives from other manufacturers by adding their name and logo to them. I wouldn't pay any attention to whether it is an IBM/Lenovo-branded drive or not.

i always thought it was the Deskstar desktop drives that got to be known as "Deathstars".

Anything that still runs today should be decent, most bad drives died within the first year of use.

Thanks to all for your comments.
It confirmed my suspicions, that the bottom line is
"anything can go wrong at any time, regardless of brand".

sarbin wrote:i always thought it was the Deskstar desktop drives that got to be known as "Deathstars".

I stand corrected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Deskstar

I guess I had read about some complaints about Travelstars at one point and assumed they were the same, but as sarbin says, apparently the "Deathstar" moniker was specific to one set of Deskstar drives.

Phil.

I prefer Seagate's, fast quite, and reasonably priced. It is the only brand I will buy factory refurb. i do have boatloads of old IBM drives, so Im fine running them also. Desktop wise, I have probably killed more Western Digital than anything else. My Maxtor's always wind up in a computer that is NOT installed in my bedroom. Very noisey.

YMMV
Ron

VIBM wrote:I have an IBM brand Travelstar hard drive (ATA/100/IDE type) for my Thinkpad, and was considering upgrading to a larger drive.

If your Thinkpad is a T43 or R52, then an IBM branded drive is a good way to ensure that you can avoid the 2010 error! In that sense it might be "better."

I know that I am waaay late to this rodeo, but after going through so many different models of hard drives on the many laptops that I have worked on, I have grown attached to Hitachi, if for no other reason: Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. Personally, they make the best program for diagnosing issues with a hard drive, or just outright testing after buying one.

I even bought a 2TB Hitachi for my homemade Quad-core PC...