IBM Sued Over Hard Drive Quality

A disgruntled PC owner is taking on Big Blue.

Michael Granito, Jr., has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that IBM's Deskstar 75GXP hard drive contains "a uniform defect in the design" that causes the product to crash resulting in "the irretrievable loss of data and programs stored on the disk." Granito filed the suit last week.

It's not the first time the Deskstar product has caused problems for IBM. Earlier this year the drive made headlines when users began complaining, claiming unusually high failure rates. Then, IBM claimed the drive, which debuted to strong reviews in March 2000, was failing 1 to 2 percent of the time--a rate the company says is considered normal in the industry.

A representative from IBM's Storage Technology Division declines to comment on the lawsuit, noting the company received the filing only Tuesday. Granito and his attorney Jonathan Shub also decline to comment about the filing.

Shub did note, however, that it could take as much as a year for the court to decide whether the filing warrants class action status, so consumers experiencing their own problems with IBM drives shouldn't wait, he says.

"If they have problems with IBM, they shouldn't sit on their hands to see this case be resolved--it might not happen," he says.

If the case does become a class action suit, Deskstar 75GXP owners can contact the law firm for details on collecting their award, he says. Until then, however, there is no need to contact him or to take specific action, he says.

Irreversible and Permanent Loss

The thrust of Granito's claim: IBM touted the Deskstar product as a "safe and reliable disk drive," but he alleges it is more prone to failure than other hard drives.

In his lawsuit, Granito says he purchased two Deskstar 75GXP drives. Both failed. The claim suggests these failures are due to defective design or manufacturing, and offers specific details on what happens when the drive goes down. The suit states: "When the defect manifests by the sudden occurrence of a loud clicking or scratching noise, the Desktar 75GXP stops operating and 'crashes.'"

Granito seeks "replacement of the defective hard disk drive and for restitution of the loss suffered" as a result of IBM's "misrepresentations and sales of defective hard disk drives."

A Rare Case

Rumors of Deskstar drives failing aren't news to Dave Reinsel, research manager of hard disk drives and components at IDC. However, IBM assured him, too, that the drive's failure rates weren't out of the ordinary.

However, news of the filing was a surprise, he says, because it's quite rare to see a hard drive lawsuit involving consumers.

When it comes to hard drives, most legal issues happen between companies, who often wrangle over patent infringements.

Consumers have less reason to complain. "Hard drives are so reliable today--it's pretty uncharacteristic for a hard drive to go sour like this," Reinsel notes, especially for IBM, which he says has a reputation for making solid drives.

When IBM introduced the drives, they contained some cutting edge technology that helped make them among the largest ever for desktop PCs. Reinsel doesn't think a lawsuit like this will prevent hard drive makers from continuing to innovate their products, however.

"The type of testing that goes on in hard drive production is very rigorous," he explains. "Companies don't just flippantly introduce new technologies. They don't open themselves to this."