My hard drive started letting out death squeaks the other night while I was working on one of my videos. Everything froze up while the drive let out its death song. I had to cold boot to stop the system.

Luckily the system booted back up and I was able to test the drive. It only ate the temp file that was being written at the time. Also found some unused sectors that were bad.

Made an entire backup before doing anything else. Then I proceeded to do some further tests and also check with Dell support. My research and e-mails to support have resulted in Dell sending out a new drive. The hard drive I have is an IBM 75GXP 75GB. I found many discussions about these IBM drives and their high failure rates! Argh.

   PCWorld : Users Complain About IBM’s Crashing Drives

When I first got this computer the original hard drive died in 3 months. Dell was good about quickly replacing it and also upgrading me free of charge from a 45GB to a 75GB. Sadly, the replacement turns out to be another problem drive. At least it has given me over 2 years of work.

The support rep showed up today to replace the drive. Oops, it’s a 45GB and not a 75GB. Well, after a quick phone call to support the tech guy says they will send out the 75 and I should have someone here tomorrow to replace it.

What do I do if it’s another one of these IBM high death rate drives?