The IBM DTLA harddisk series caused a lot of poblems for us. The 307030 (failed: 1 of 2), 307045 (3 of 3) and 307075 (1 of 2 so far) failed us miserably by developing bad sectors (with data corruption!) during use and causing lockups of the OS by not responding to write requests. Ventilation was provided by a dedicated 8x8 fan blowing between the drives (and three other additional 8x8 fans blowing into and out of the case!), still the drives kept failing. I recommend a google-search on this topic if you own such a drive.
The second DTLA 307075 hangs after accessing some files on the Dawicontrol DC 100 (BIOS 2.31, drivers 2.31) after a W2K-reinstall thereby forcing a reset. Nasty!
Download IBMs DFT-tool, test your drive and if deemed defective have it replaced while you can. You should probably do this even if DFT says that the drive can be "repaired" by overwriting it completely. This kind of "repair" most likely consists of mapping the defective sectors to reserve sectors which might work for the first few times. But who would commit valuable data to such a disk once again? Backup, backup, backup! Failing hard-disks are a severe matter, this just should not occur! IBM - shame on you!
Caution: Only if all bad sectors are soft-errors (they may be introduced by switching off a computer before the proper shutdown routine ends) overwriting the whole disk may be a reasonable and lasting solution.FAQ zu Problemen mit der IBM-DTLA-Festplattenserie (lots of links at the end)
A story about IBM DTLA 75 GXP Problems
Another FAQ-File about IBM DTLA 75 GXP Problems
IBM GXP-Problems - some hints as to what the truth may be
IBM GXP-Problems - clear advice against buying IBM-drives
IBM DTLA opened by frustrated user 1
IBM DTLA opened by frustrated user 2
The Seagate 43400N harddisk (SCSI, 2.7 GB, 5 1/2" full height) produces an unusual amount of heat. This effect is so pronounced that the manufacurer obviously decided to mount the heat-dissipating electronics board on top of the drive. After I dealt with this problem by adding a dedicated fan directly above this drive no problem occurred since 1995. Still better than a failing drive, isnt't it?
