another maxtor dies.....

Soldato
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about a year ago, i had one of my heavy used 160gig DM9 SataI drives fail on me.... sectors went missing, and the drive couldnt read the outa 40-60gig (ie first 100gig was fine). This was soon replaced by maxtors fast turn around on RMA's and i was happy as larry with a new 160gig drive DM9 sataI drive.

fast forward just 4 months, and this too failed, EXACT same issue, almost exact same size of "damage" same noises same everything. This time i really couldnt be botherd, and went on to just run along with my 200gig DM9 sataI drive.

then 3 months ago, i started running out of space, so i had to get another drive. I had a few options

1: WD Raptor 150gig for speed
2: Maxtor 250gig SataII DM10 for storage and average pace
3: Seagate drive for storage but poor pace

I chose the middle line, as i needed more storage, but i still wanted a fastish drive.

Boy i wish i hadnt. This 250gig drive barely has a bit of dust on it, and has just failed, exact same noises, head constantly clicking and not being detected on boot up in some cases... WHAT THE HELL have i done wrong? I keep hearing about Nvidia and Maxtor not mixing, but why is my 200gig seem to be doing ok? (touch wood)

this is really ******* me off!!!!! :mad:
 
It's nothing to do with the chipset, or you in fact. It's Maxtor's very poor build quality of late. Some drives, like your 200GB, actually live up to their QC rating but some just don't, and this is more so a case with Maxtor than most other manufacturers. I don't know if thy use cheaper components or whatnot, but their desktop drives are very poor.

Their SCSI range is excellent however, so they are cutting corners somewhere to the detriment of the average consumer.

Just plain unlucky, you'll just have to get another RMA.
 
never had a maxtor fail on me yet, but my current drives are quite old (last one was an 80gig one). my brand new 500gig drive better not fail tho :eek:
 
tomos said:
never had a maxtor fail on me yet, but my current drives are quite old (last one was an 80gig one). my brand new 500gig drive better not fail tho :eek:

my first 8 drives was going strong, although a lot of them arnt used anymore. I have a 10 year old maxtor 800mb that still works today, and only has like 10mb bad sectors on it.

its the latest drives, all DM9/DM10 that seem to have the problems... :(


edit:

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-maxtor-diamondmax-10.htm

this is almost exactly what happens to all my drives... maybe its a simple firmware curruption? Can this be repaired?
 
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Interesting (I have 4 maxtor drives in this PC).

One of the big problems for me is that we don't really know sales figures for each drive manufacturer, so while it may seem like a certain manufacturer has a high fail rate (Go back 5 years and it was the IBM Deathstar range), it may simply be because more people are buying those drives and hence we hear about them more.

Over the years I've had drives from Quantum (now IBM), Fujitsu (now Maxtor), IBM, WD and Maxtor. The only ones I've never had problems with are WD and Maxtor, but that doesn't necessarily mean I trust them, I've probably just been lucky.

Personally I'm wondering if in a few years time we might see a move away from the current HD system. It's quite old technology when you think about it really, with mechanical limitations and hence mechanical liabilities as well. For example if Flash memory etc is able to scale up and reach high capacity, maybe that technology or an offshoot of it could be used for primary data storage.
 
HangTime said:
Interesting (I have 4 maxtor drives in this PC).

One of the big problems for me is that we don't really know sales figures for each drive manufacturer, so while it may seem like a certain manufacturer has a high fail rate (Go back 5 years and it was the IBM Deathstar range), it may simply be because more people are buying those drives and hence we hear about them more.

Over the years I've had drives from Quantum (now IBM), Fujitsu (now Maxtor), IBM, WD and Maxtor. The only ones I've never had problems with are WD and Maxtor, but that doesn't necessarily mean I trust them, I've probably just been lucky.

Personally I'm wondering if in a few years time we might see a move away from the current HD system. It's quite old technology when you think about it really, with mechanical limitations and hence mechanical liabilities as well. For example if Flash memory etc is able to scale up and reach high capacity, maybe that technology or an offshoot of it could be used for primary data storage.

it is true, Maxtor does have quiet a high market share (i think) but so does Seagate and you hardly NEVER hear about those failing! I knew i should have brought one of those!

overall ive lost 300-400gig on maxtors in the past 2 years, and im not a happy bunny :(

and before you say about backups, the 250gig drive i just brought WAS the backupdrive! LOL :( How unlucky :rolleyes:
 
Yes, I think Seagate are one of the biggest HDU manufacturers and they have been around for one of the longest times. In fact, I think it was Seagate in the 1980's who did something or other to make HDU's for the average consumer. I'm sure I read something like that on Wikipedia. Maxtor have a pathetically poor consumer range though it is hard to fault their SCSI range with the Atlas. It seems as though they just cut corners and care not for the average person. Still, Seagate have now bought them and hopefully we should start seeing improvements from them.
 
i hope so. i plan to buy an enclosure for my maxtor drive now just in case. should help keep it cooler with the fan in there like with my raptors. hopefully a constant low temp and less vibration should keep it alive :)

worth it for 500gig of data. grr, wish i had bought a WD now
 
tomos said:
i hope so. i plan to buy an enclosure for my maxtor drive now just in case. should help keep it cooler with the fan in there like with my raptors. hopefully a constant low temp and less vibration should keep it alive :)

worth it for 500gig of data. grr, wish i had bought a WD now

my maxtors never go over 34c (active cooling)
 
from what i have read the best large drive to get is the WD caviar Raid Edition 400 gig drive. they class it as a near line server use with 100% usage in a 24/7 environment.

if i need large reliable capacity thats the drive im going to get.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
from what i have read the best large drive to get is the WD caviar Raid Edition 400 gig drive. they class it as a near line server use with 100% usage in a 24/7 environment.

if i need large reliable capacity thats the drive im going to get.
And a very good choice at that. All the RE's and RE2's (get the RE2) are basically Raptor 7200rpms according to many sources.
 
will have to look out for those. need to large drives in raid-0. was planning on risking another maxtor but may get these instead

ok, have found good reviews on these too. have bought 2 of the RE2's and 2 enclosures for them. will see how they are next week sometime :)
 
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Overlag said:
source?

i guess the motors and heads will be the same, but the disk surfaces must be totaly different, considering densities etc? :confused:
Of course they are different. They are likened to Raptor 7200rpms due to their robustness. They are designed to run 24/7 1.2M hours like Raptors. I think that the head system is the same but obviously the platters [and possibly motor] are different. I read it in a review I was reading a few days ago. Lost the link now.
 
storage review has some info on these of course.

this is one has some details:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200510/WD4000YR_1.html

to quote:
The RE2, however, is a totally new beast. Although it features a 7200 RPM spindle speed and though it is equipped with native SATA electronics, the RE2 leverages much of its physical engineering from WD's 10,000 RPM Raptor. In fact, the RE2 borrows so much from the Raptor family that the firm seriously considered a name such as "Raptor 7200."
 
cool. just happened to find it after reading the posts above. seems to be good news anyway. look forward to comparing it to a hitachi 7k250 250gb raid-0 setup :)
 
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