Maxtor hard drives

[GT98]

Do Maxtor Hard drive have suck? I'm Curious since I've been using Western Digital Drives for the past 8 years or so (yeah I know they have problems, but at least I can get a cross shiped drive with in a week!) and never had luck with Maxtor drives (they all started to get bad sectors with in 3 months of using them..back in the days of DOS ) , but I'm looking for a HD to use in a Shuttle SS51 XPC mini PC and I think might run into problems with IBM or WD drive in a small warm Box () like that.

[Wombat]

No, Maxtor hard drives are quite possibly the best, most reliable drives on the market right now.

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by Wombat
No, Maxtor hard drives are quite possibly the best, most reliable drives on the market right now.

I tend to agree. I have a DiamondMax60+ and it's reliable and fast. Been using it for close to a year now without problems, just OS problems.

[Patrick]

I beg to differ

Wombat, if that's the case then we as consumers are in for a tough ride. I've installed about ten Maxtor D740X-6L 20-80 Gb drives in client's computers in the last eight months and two of them needed to be exchanged immediately. One drive would simply lock the computer right up when it was connected and the other drive, although appearing to work alright, could not be used to capture DV at all without massive frame drops. HD Tach showed huge spikes when used to test this drive. Any other drive in it's place worked fine.

Two failures out of ten is a poor record as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe the quality control for any of the hard drive manufacturers today is up to snuff. All they're interested in is making the drives bigger, faster, and cheaper. Quality, durability, reliability... What's that?

[ZokesPro]

I've seen a lot of lower end Maxtor drives fail, if anything I'd stick with the best ones.

[The PIT]

Dunno I haven't used one for long enougth and they ain't very common at work.
The failure rates are too high these days. Prob is, how else can they make you put a new one in when you've got tons of spare space.
One computer I've got has 56gig of space and only 20 in use and no doubt I could reduce that.

So fat the crapist drives I've seen are.

Fujistu (No longer make them)
Ibm now sold the business.
Quatum who are now Maxtor.

[Patrick]

Huh?

ZokesPro, are you suggesting that the D740X-6L series are Maxtor's "lower end" drives?

[Wombat]

Patrick, you're right. It will be a rough ride. IBM? Not in my machine again. WD? Iffy track record, plus ask Greebe how his went.

I said "best," not "as good as we want them to be." I still recommend Maxtor as the least of all evils.

[dZeus]

The problem is that almost everyone bases his/her opinion on personal experience, which is often limited to a (relatively) very small quantity of drives. It's difficult to accurately judge the reliability of a drive (let alone compare to other drives) based on experiences with relatively low quantaties of drives (say, less than 100 of each drive series of each manufacturer).

For proper comparison, you would need the results of a really large poll (like Storagereview did, however their database got lost, how ironically, in a drive-crash), or the return rates of the manufacturers itself (or a really really large distributor).

With that being said, I don't think that there have been reports of unusually high exchange rates on any drives of any manufacturer over the past one or two years, except for IBM's 60 and 75 GXP series.

Personally I would go with anything except the 120 GXP drive series of IBM, until the series has been on the market for, say, 8 months, without (m)any reports of high failure rates. You might also want to hold of the 120 & 160 GB Maxtor drives, as the current warranty status is: "Warranty Period To Be Determined". Not good, and I discovered it only after I bought a 120 GB unit. I'm hoping for it to be determined as 3 years though

[William]

I'd tend to agree that no one is making drives to last anymore. My experience with drives has been WD=worst; EVERY drive I've had from them has failed (a 1.6, two 10s, and a 30. The 30 was replaced, and the replacement failed) IBM=better; two type 13s that still run fine 130MB, ran fine for 10 years. 1GB laptop drive that shipped with a bad partition table (might not have bee IBMs fault, but it left a sour taste), a 40GB thats been running fine for just shy of 12 months now, and a 120GXP 80GB that I bought a couple of months ago, which has't failed yet.
I'd no cause to complain about Fujitsu as I have a 512B drive that is still running fine.
Finally I bought a Maxtor 40GB drive about half a year back, which went into my sisters computer, and I believe is still runing fine. I suspect that when it comes to upgrading them again, I'll fit laptop drives, on the theory that they may be less susceptible to being knocked, and that they probably run cooler.

[Wombat]

You might also want to hold of the 120 & 160 GB Maxtor drives, as the current warranty status is: "Warranty Period To Be Determined". Not good, and I discovered it only after I bought a 120 GB unit. I'm hoping for it to be determined as 3 years though

Actually, I think that it is a good thing. Maxtor changed their warranty policy, and it is actually easier on the customer. Maxtor doesn't say "your drive is covered for X years, now prove it with your receipt." They wait until they stop the manufacture of a model, and say "ALL drives of model Y are covered for until X date", where X is a number of years after the last drive of that model was made/sold by Maxtor. Their web site is down right now, so I couldn't look up the time. I've checked into it before though, and really liked their decision.

Laptop drives are a little more motion friendly, but they also don't last as long.

[MK]

I have to second Wombat, because a lot of IBM`s and WD`s are dying here at the university at the moment. As I didn`t see any Maxtor fail recently (including mine), they would be my choice at the moment.

MK

[Dogbert]

WD - failed on me, my friends and many other people I know.
IBM (scsi) - failed on me once, got replaced.
Seagate - hehe, seen 3 fail in a row one after the other (a friend bought 1, replaced it 2 times for failures, then took a quantum). I don't blame seagate for it, I think someone really mishandled the shipment cause they were all from the same box.
Quantum - Track record here
Maxtor - So far so good

[DentyCracker]

I have had one Maxtor fail on me, it was repaired and sent back and is happily running 4 years later in this machine that I'm using(my sister's, although it is still listed in my sig). Oh, and Maxtor needn't have replaced it, I neglected to tell them that it had an unfortunate accidental meeting with my keyboard (keyboard fell on it from a decent height), after which it began to behave strangely. I have also installed close to one hundred Maxtors (10 GB and upward) and have not had ANY fail. My experience with other hard drive manufacturers has not been as extensive or as favourable. I personally will NEVER put a WD drive in my machine. Even when it has been proved that they are the best, fastest most reliable drives. Unless they are the only manufacturer of HDs I have been put off them by past unreliability. Kind of like how I will be loath to buy an ATi card for myself. I have seen many WDs fail, more than any other manufacturer.

[Paulr]

I don't think there is a 100% reliable HD manufacturer out there at the moment.

Nobody wants to touch IBM's with a barge pole, not that I've had any problems with them and the 4 in my home system have been absolutely flawless, but then they are well cooled.
I'm sure Maxtor are a lot better than they were, but I went through a whole series of these at home and in work PC's, drives failing and then the replacement failing etc.
The WD's, especially with the 8MB cache are really nice drives and I've not heard of many of these failing.
Then there is the good old Seagate units which are also good, but are terrible in RAID configurations.

When I eventually get around to replacing my 4x 60GXP IBM's it will be for Serial ATA drives.
IBM will be firmly out of the HD business by then, so I guess I'll look at either WD or Seagate.