Maxtor SUCKS!

[TheCDBurner]

Not to add anything to the (several) little WD Vs. Maxtor threads that have been here lately, but I just had ANOTHER 60GB maxtor bite the dust. (That, for the count, is *3* out of 4 60GB Maxtors that I had).

100% Western Digital from now on!

[XXXXX]

Not to add anything to the (several) little WD Vs. Maxtor threads that have been here lately, but I just had ANOTHER 60GB maxtor bite the dust. (That, for the count, is *3* out of 4 60GB Maxtors that I had).

100% Western Digital from now on!

LOL....just to throw in my two cents. I had two of the WD 160GB-JB 8mb cache versions that were both less than 6 months old in my water cooled, and extra fan cooled PC, that each failed about a month apart. They were both fully warrantied, and the replacements have been running for about 8 months with no problems, but it reminded me of the importance of having Optical media backups.

I have 3 other IDE & Promise Card internal HD's that are Maxtor, WD, & Seagate that have had no problems for about 2 years in the same rig. One of the WD drives that failed was on slave of secondary IDE, and the other was on master of the Promise IDE card. Both had the same extra fan cooling blowing on them as the adjacent drives.

Also, make sure you have adequate fan cooling because using an 8 temp wire probe setup with a DigiDoc monitor, the probes taped to the Hard Drives get hotter than any component I am running, except for the Vantec Stealth 520 Watt Power Supply monitor. I also have monitors taped to my Radeon 9700 Pro, Athlon 2700 CPU, and Corsair PC-3500 DDR. And make sure the blow hole is not blocked on any HD.

[stricklando]

I have a maxtor 160HD with the ATA 133 PCI interface tthat hasnt been working since I bought it. It would only format to 33 gigs. I tired several different ways to install it and all of them failed. I also had a a total of 6 different people try to no avail. Then when I called Maxtor, they keep asking for an error # and would not accept that the drive was faulty and needed replacement. I have a 120 gig Maxtor that has been working just fine for the last 2 years or so. Lesson learned- no drives larger than 160.

[Shredder]

Not to add anything to the (several) little WD Vs. Maxtor threads that have been here lately, but I just had ANOTHER 60GB maxtor bite the dust. (That, for the count, is *3* out of 4 60GB Maxtors that I had).

I have several Maxtor drives that I have been using for several years and I have no problem with them so far except they are little noisy compare to WD and Segate. Hard drives tend to fail alot and fast with poor computer power supply and bad cooling/airflow within the system. However, most common reason for hard drive failure is the dust buildup inside your computers, specially around hard drives. Most hard drives can die from dust static. Anyways, one of my computers' hard drive is pretty old Maxtor 10GB drive, it's still working with no problem yet.

[smartin4]

At work we had a pair of 200GB WD fail within 3 days of one another. Aside from that, I have had little trouble with WD.

I have four Maxtor's at home and have had no problems, work is a different story.

Eight months ago, we bought 33 new Dell Optiplex GX 270s: 3.2GHz P4, 1 GB Ram, 40 GB Maxtor hd in each. As of today we have had 11 hds fail and need replacement (no repeat offenders either, 11 different computers)! That is 1/3 of the computers that we bought !!

I called tech support today to get the latest 2 replaced, and told him I wanted to speak to someone in customer service about this issue, he transferred me to CS, who told me they couldn't help me and transferred me back to tech, who then told me to call our account rep. Still waiting to hear back from him....

[TheCDBurner]

I've never had an WD drive fail (IBM though!), I've been using WDs since the 540MB drive was brand new.

As for cooling: this system has a fan blowing air directly across the drives (with filter), the PSU is a 480 Watt Antec, hooked into an APC UPS.

Every product, from any manufacture, can and will fail. Nothing is perfect. I've had bad luck with Maxtors; I know some have had bad luck with WDs. I remember WD had a bunch of their 40GB drives die awhile ago; I had four of those in an old system (with piss-poor cooling in that system), and those drives are still going strong. That IBM 60GB I had lasted only about 3 months.

Had a Seagate die once; but then, it was 5-6 years old, and was a HUGE drive when it was made: 40MB. Replaced it with that 540MB WD

I am, at the moment, considering buying a 300GB Maxtor external. But in light of yet another drive death, I'm reconsidering. However, being a 5400RPM drive, it should be a little less troublesome. Not sure I want to chance it, though.

[XXXXX]

I really think it is a crap shoot about HD's failing. Those two WD drives were the only I have had fail out of at least 120 HD's over the last 20 years....going back to the pre-HD 5 1/4 floppy drive IBM PC

[eliminator]

I just switched to Hitachi, better price + 3yrs warranty !

[TheWizard]

For those of you that have had several drives by a particular brand fail or have had problems with certain drives, did it ever occur to you that the problem could be on your end? If a computing environment is unstable to begin with, it doesn't matter which part you add to it, chances are it will perform poorly.

I have owned several drives from Seagate, WD, and Maxtor. Only one of them failed right out of the box, and yes, it was a Maxtor. I called up Maxtor's customer service line, told them the problem, and they shipped out a replacement drive immediately. I received it later the same week. Does this mean I have stopped using Maxtor? No. Truth be told, I still have several Maxtor drives going strong. And, if anything, after witnessing how quick and courteous their product replacement service is, I would buy from them again. I like a company that takes care of me. Even though I received a bad drive, and they crop up now and again, it has not become a trend with Maxtor.

[Boba_Fett]

For those of you that have had several drives by a particular brand fail or have had problems with certain drives, did it ever occur to you that the problem could be on your end? If a computing environment is unstable to begin with, it doesn't matter which part you add to it, chances are it will perform poorly.

I have owned several drives from Seagate, WD, and Maxtor. Only one of them failed right out of the box, and yes, it was a Maxtor. I called up Maxtor's customer service line, told them the problem, and they shipped out a replacement drive immediately. I received it later the same week. Does this mean I have stopped using Maxtor? No. Truth be told, I still have several Maxtor drives going strong. And, if anything, after witnessing how quick and courteous their product replacement service is, I would buy from them again. I like a company that takes care of me. Even though I received a bad drive, and they crop up now and again, it has not become a trend with Maxtor.

Consider yourself lucky. In my fairly educated opinion, HDDs operate fine within even the most extreme operating enviornments (heat-wise). Its just that, for the most part, they fail for absolutely no reason! I've had 2 maxtors go bad on me within 1 year... all that data lost still makes my stomach curl. I personally believe nowadays (like, within the last 5 years) it is just shoddy parts used in all but the most elite HDDs (top of the line SATA and SCSI). It is probably cheaper to offer 1 or 2 year warrenties with regular 7200rpm drive that have a average life of 1.5 years than to go ahead and make their HDDs last 3x that or more. It really sucks... the one component that you need integrety in most of all in your PC is also the one most likely to go. Fiddlesticks

[TheWizard]

In my fairly educated opinion, HDDs operate fine within even the most extreme operating enviornments (heat-wise)

Ah, but there are so many other variables to consider, not only heat related stuff. Maybe the drive was slightly damaged during shipment, either from the manufacturing plant in Singapore to the Maxtor warehouse or from the Maxtor warehouse to the Staples warehouse (just using them as a hypothetical example) or from the Staples warehouse to a Staples store.

all that data lost still makes my stomach curl

Backup, backup, backup. This is vital. Never trust anything to one and only one source.

[Boba_Fett]

Backup, backup, backup. This is vital. Never trust anything to one and only one source.

Oh, believe you me... I have learned that lesson the hard way. Now if only we can see some dual layer, dual sided DVD-18 recordable media come out at a reasonable price here pretty quick

[Spoonlord]

I just recently had a WD1800 fail on me. Fortunately I was able to get all the data off. This drive was very loud from the beginning. But it started to act up during a defrag. Basicly it just stopped. It would come back but it would always die again. I got all my data off and wiped it, complete reformat to NTFS, put in external enclosure but it died again.

I purchased this drive in Feb 2003 and it failed in May 2004. So you can guess what WD said. As I paid $150 for this drive I was more than POed. But they kept up the same ol song and dance, "your drive is out of warrenty".

Thus, WD has lost me as a customer forever, plus as I have some sizable influence in the computer purchases for my organization I will be sure that no WD drives are purchased. My revenge will be to live well and do everything I can to deny them sales.

[Scour]

Hello!

I have Maxtor-drives in use for years without any problem, but I heard that teh Diamondmax 9-series have problems.

But I don´t can say that WD-drives are more reliable, i had bad experiences with WD.

My friend´s IBM-drives failed often, Samsung is also not real good.

The best experiences i have with Seagate. Not always the fastest, but real reliable

[Kennyshin]

When I want to have the most reliable HDD, I choose Samsung. When I want the cheapest HDD, I buy WD's. When I need performance, Hitachi's the answer.

Maxtor's expensive, slow, and unreliable, especially so in South Korea.

I'm not talking about performance alone, but also company polices regarding distribution channels, prices, and warranty.

[aviationwiz]

Or, if you need a combination of cheap, reliable, & fast, just get a Maxtor in the first place!

I have only heard bad things regarding Samsung Hard Drive, and WD isn't cheap!

[Scour]

When I want to have the most reliable HDD, I choose Samsung. When I want the cheapest HDD, I buy WD's. When I need performance, Hitachi's the answer.

Maxtor's expensive, slow, and unreliable, especially so in South Korea.

I'm not talking about performance alone, but also company polices regarding distribution channels, prices, and warranty.

Samsung and reliable? I don´t think so

In Germany is Samsung the cheapest, Hitachi and Seagate the more expensive HDD´s, depends on the size in Gigabyte

[aviationwiz]

Funny that we've had hard drives as a topic in this forum lately.

Just had a Western Digital 20GB from about 2.5 years ago die on me.
Shitty WD.

[lightningbaron]

My Maxtor 160GB died within 3 months, returned it via warranty and got one back, so no complaints about the warranty service, but I have had bad luck with Maxtor. In the same PC, I have a Western Digital 100GB running at least 2 years and Seagate 80GB running at least 1.5 years with no issues. No one manufacturer is perfect, I never RMA'ed a drive from IBM Deathstar. I have RMA'ed 2 drives by Western Digital and 1 drive by Seagate. Otherwise, any dead hard drives have been replaced instead. My goto for hard drives is Seagate.

[CowboySlim]

Lightningbaron came back - my favorite avatar (but it's not wiggling today).

I agree, nothing but Seagate for me from now on.

Slim

[digitaldoc]

I still have a 10 year old Western Digital 1 GB hard drive that works!

In my newest system I use a Western Digital 160 GB with the 8 mb cache. Great drive, has been up and running for 6 months now. I also have a Western Digital 120 GB external usb 2.0.

Never was thrilled with Maxtor or Seagate.

WD's drives are great, but their included tools are useless.

[wicked1]

I have 3 Maxtor 160gb's,1 Maxtor 250gb,1 WD 250gb in my main PC. I have had 1 Maxtor 160 fail in the last few years but was quickly replaced via a cross ship.My case has 7 80mm fans and is watercooled. 2 80mms blow over the hard drive stack but they are still a little warmer than I'd like. The maxtors definately are hotter than the WD. They are all 7200RPM 8MB models. I dont really have a preference though. Whatever is on sale at the time I need to expand is what goes in my computer.

[integspec]

When it comes to HDD, it could only be SG. It used to be Quantum for me long time ago. When Maxtor took over Quantum, I switched to SG and never looked back. Didn't think Maxtor was bad, but at that time I had mostly worked with Quantum and Seagate. WD has the highest percentage of failures in my experience (Anybody remember that HP, Compaq and few other vendors had to change WD PC HDDs in batches years ago?) . Additionally, all of you guys who come from Wintel or other server backgrounds would know that server manufacturers always go for Seagate.

Cheers.

[pachi]

i have 2 Max and 2 WD and never had a problem with them...like someone said..cooling is important...

[Spazmogen]

I've owned 3 Maxtor drives, a 1GB, 4.3GB & 40GB. All run fine.
I've also got a 20gb IBM, 60GB WD & 160GB WD.

I've never had a drive fail at all. My system is seldom off.

I lucked out with the 160gb WD, it's got a 3 year warranty. I bought it on Dec 25th this year. It also came with an ATA100 card.

The WD 60gb has a 1 year warranty, which I'll extend shortly for $14.95