Hitachi Deskstar

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The Deskstar is the name of a product line of computer hard drives. It was originally produced by IBM until Hitachi bought IBM's hard drive division in 2003. From then on it was called the Hitachi Deskstar.

The IBM Deskstar 75GXP, and several other models made around the same time, became infamous for their reportedly high failure rates. This lead to the drives being colloquially referred to as "Deathstars".

Despite failures being reported within the manufacturer warranty period (3 years), a class-action lawsuit is underway in the USA to claim refunds from Hitachi for all affected drives. The decision of this lawsuit will provide the best indication as to whether there is actually a manufacturer fault with these hard drive models.

Since the lawsuit, existing Deskstar 120GXP drives had been rerated to 333 power-on hours per month, even though the spec is not new at the time[1]. The last of the Deskstar series produced under IBM name was the 180GXP.

1 The problems
2 Products
- 2.1 IBM models
- 2.2 Hitachi models
3 External links

[edit] The problems

A firmware update (details) gives a clue to some of the issues:

Possible data corruption due to a problem with S.M.A.R.T. background operations.
Application of wear levelling to avoid the heads dwelling too long over the same area

The combination of two relatively new (at the time) technologies, GMR heads and glass platters may be largely to blame for the issues.