IBM Hard Drives and Highpoint Controllers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Slackmaster2K
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Slackmaster2K

Slackmaster2K

Gone
Bad bad combination.

I had two IBM hard drives fail on me on Highpoint Controllers...specifically the HPT366 built into the Abit BE6-II motherboard. Did some searching on deja and sure as shit, I'm not alone. The funny thing is that when I had the first drive go, I *thought* I noticed a bad pattern with IBM drives and Abit boards. Now there are hundreds of posts with people having problems.

Problems range from not being able to boot, to data corruption and reported bad sectors (my problem). I was getting corruption once every 3 months or so, which had me thinking that the drives were simply faulty. I know now that wasn't the case. ( The last time this happened I did a low level format on the drive, afterwards it passed all health tests. I still sent the drive back because I didn't feel good about it...now I realize that it's a problem related to both the HPT366 and IBM Deskstar hard drives.)

So anyway, the best drive for your HPT366 *in my opinion* is a Maxtor. Plenty of these combinations running well. If you have an IBM drive on an HPT366 then you might consider moving it back to the UDMA/33 controller.

The good news is that IBM's returns department is very helpful.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Slackmaster2K,

Funny, 'cause when I built my DAW last May, using an ABIT BE6-II motherboard with a built-in Highpoint HPT366 UDMA-66 controller and a Maxtor drive, I had lots of problems with freeze-ups. I checked an Abit motherboard newsgroup and found that many many souls were reporting having horrible problems with the Highpoint controllers and Maxtor drives. So I disabled the controller and put in a Promise Ultra66. At the cost of losing a PCI slot, everything then worked like a top.

Now here almost a year later they are fine with Maxtor but actually damaging IBM drives? I don't think I'm going to try any Highpoint products in the near future...

-AlChuck
 
Interesting. My Maxtor works great with the HPT366 on my BE6 (well over a year old). Though I have always kept up on BIOS updates for both the mobo and the highpoint controller.

I agree, it must be the Highpoint itself more than the drives. I think that a good system can be built around the highpoint, but there are one too many variables involved. (Now I've heard good things about the Promise controller, except that it does NOT like to be overclocked...whereas the highpoint doesn't seem to mind running high (at least up to 42Mhz))

Argh, it's hard to find one solid motherboard that covers all the bases without adding any funky shit.

I retract my statement about Maxtor drives on the Highpoint. I've seen it work in several situtations, but if you say you had trouble....there must be more to it than just "this drive with this controller"...something we're not considering.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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