I have 4 external maxtor hard drives (one touch II) for archiving music. I've purchased all of them in the last 3 years. 3 of the 4 have been corrupted at some point and would reformat. In the last month 2 of them have died and would not reformat. I called maxtor and they replaced one of them, which I had called about before the warranty expired. The other one that died is now 3 months outside of it's warranty. I had problems with this one earlier as well, but it would reformat. I did not call specifically about this drive and that problem. Now they won't replace this drive at all despite my complaining and talking to a supervisor.
Lessons learned:
1) maxtor sucks ass
2) call about every little hard drive problem and document it early. that way when the drive eventually dies, there is documentation.
3) don't trust a hard drive