Re: IBM Thinkpad 570 (type 2644) harddisk problem
On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Anders Torger wrote:
>I have a problem with the 6.4 GB harddisk on my IBM Thinkpad 570 (type 2644).
>Sometimes, very rarely, only four times since April when it was purchased, the
>harddisk jams and submits terrible sounds, like its going to crash. When this
>happen, the only way out of the problems is to turn off the computer and
>restart it, since the computer will lockup when it tries to access the jammed
>harddisk. A few of my friends got the same model around the same time, and
>they experience the same problems (running Debian or FreeBSD). However, the
>problem has never occured under Windows, although it may be too early to claim
>that it will never happen there.
I have a Thinkpad 600E with 10G drive and no strange sounds at all from it.
In the past I have seen desktop systems with hard drives from what used to be
Conner have problems under Linux but not under Windows, such problems
inevitably resulted in loss of data (but no strange sounds AFAIK).
>IBM seem to be unaware of this problem, as well as the problem with a few
>wierd pixels on the mouse pointers (appearing in both Windows and Linux) on all
>five machines I have seen (they were all purchased at the same occation).
I have a single pixel on my Thinkpad screen which is always at half-brighness
on the red scale. If I have a typical desktop with white background or grey
title bars in the area then it's not noticable. In text mode it stands out
from the black background.
My company laptop is a Compaq which has the same problem (but the pixel is
white). The problem is that making the 1M transistors in a TFT without any
errors is almost impossible. Apparently IBM won't give you a warrantee
replacement on the screen unless at least 20 pixels have problems. This is
understandable as the TFT screen comprises half the cost of the unit. If
they made the warrantee level 5 pixels then they would probably have to add
25% to the cost of the Thinkpad to cover all the screens they would throw out
at the factory...
>I would like to know if someone has a solution to this harddisk problem, or at
>least has experienced it.
I suggest recording the sound and asking IBM for a replacement hard drive.
Russell Coker
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