[ltp] Info on IBM travelstar 25GS drive

[Mendel Cooper]

Recently bought a used IBM Travelstar 25-GB drive on eBay. Got it cheap.

It arrived today, and there were a couple of strange things about it.

When I unpacked the drive, it was very warm to the touch. Very warm. The
UPS guy had left it on my doorstep, and it had lain there for maybe
ten minutes, sure, but it was in the shade. And it was securely packed
inside a cardboard box within plastic peanuts. So, heating from direct
sunlight couldn't have done it. Weird.

Then I noticed that the drive had an audible rattle. I thought it might
be broken but . . . when installed it spun up all right, and the TP
770Z I installed it in detected it. Did a test install of Windows 95
(boo!) because I had a CD handy. Everything went okay. The drive is
*very* noisy (fairly loud whine when it's spinning), though. I'll try
installing Fedora Core 2 on it when I receive it next week. Will do a
complete check for bad blocks.

Did some more checking. On another model (4 GB) IBM Travelstar drive,
there's a sticker that says "rattle o.k." -- so maybe the rattle really
is okay, and not something loose in the works.

Does anyone have any more info about this model drive? Any idiosyncracies?

It's an IBM Travelstar 25GS, model # DARA-225000, 25.38 GB, 5411 rpm.
P/N: 31L9879

The manufacture date is Nov '99, and this was one of the first of the
5400 rpm 2.5" drives on the market. Hope it doesn't have any hardware
bugs. Anyone know?

Thanks.


Mendel