Topic: Maxtor sucks

[jbraveman]

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

[RebelRebel]

My experience has been the opposite. WDs and Seagate have been PITA for me.

[mmedley.]

Maxtor externals does suck! I have one as well, and it gets corrupted all the damn time. I don't use it for mission critical stuff anymore though. Just temporary storage while I burn etc. My internal Maxtor seems to be a good drive though. Knock on wood....

Seagate drives have been very good to me, as with Western Digital. Seagates have the 5YR warranty too.

[Mic D]

Lacie externals own your face.

[nic]

Lacie externals own your face.

this is true!
I've had way more issues with WD than Maxtor.

[eric.B]

Im thinking this might be the ultimate solution...   1 terabyte

http://www.yellowmachine.com/products/index.htm

[tenesejedd]

I'm running 2 maxtor internals and 1 maxtor external and have never had problems.... sorry to hear that yours keep dropping out.

But I do agree... never trust hard drives in general. I think there are bound to be problems with any product that is mass produced to this type of scale. Companies are always looking for the cheapest production methods... but to what expense?

[SparkE!]

My experience has been the opposite. WDs and Seagate have been PITA for me.

Same here.  The worst I've seen were the IBM Travelstars, though.  I've never had a Maxtor crap on me.  Ever.

[RebelRebel]

Ive always thought of Maxtor and Plextor to be the upper crust as far as reliability.

[BC]

I don't trust HD's either and am getting set to buy enough HD space to mirror all the music I have stored. One good tip that I read is that not to buy multiple HD's from the same batch of drives, as defective HD's tend to be from the same production batch. (though it doesn't sound like you did that seeing as you bought them over three years)

It seems like the failure rate you are seeing is out of the ordinary, might want to make sure it is not getting to hot in your computer, excessive heat can cause HD's to fail prematurely. There are little computer fans that mount into a front panel slot on desktops that you can add for better cooling. Just a thought.

[hzgone]

hard drives will fail that is a givin.  sorry about your loss

[nickgregory]

Lacie externals own your face.

agreed.  There is a reason why all telcos use lacie drives to back up their billing reocrds....I have been very happy with my Lacie externals, not a problem yet (knocking on wood)

[eric.B]

the one maxtor drive I had failed in one year and one month...  so much for the warranty AND the data..   

[Church-Audio]

With Data corruption it’s usually not the drive it’s the interface going to the drive in this case the USB to IDE interface * there have been many problems with some of these*  The drives work well until they die Every time I have had a Maxtor fail, it has been with in 1-3 months of the warranty expiring. Hummm Makes you think did they do something to the firmware to make them fail? At a set time of say so many hours of use? That would make since but its just speculation on my part, and not really something anyone can prove unless you are a programmer and can download the firmware and look at it line by line.
But it does make you wonder how they always fail outside of warranty by a few months.

Maxtor externals does suck! I have one as well, and it gets corrupted all the damn time. I don't use it for mission critical stuff anymore though. Just temporary storage while I burn etc. My internal Maxtor seems to be a good drive though. Knock on wood....

Seagate drives have been very good to me, as with Western Digital. Seagates have the 5YR warranty too.

[BC]

Lacie externals own your face.

agreed.  There is a reason why all telcos use lacie drives to back up their billing reocrds....I have been very happy with my Lacie externals, not a problem yet (knocking on wood)

Does Lacie actually make their own hard drives though? For some reason I thought of them as a company that was getting their drives from someone else and marketing them under their own name.