Maxtor HD's that bad?

Noni

Noni

Noni

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I have a Maxtor SATA 250GB HD in my rig and I want to know why they are so bad?

Im worried about various comments saying that they fail very easily and that I will lose all my data :O

Can anyone elaborate on this?
 
I find some people get lucky with Maxtor drives.

Personally, I've have pulled too many dead Maxtors and read too many horror stories about them to ever trust them.

I would never use one in my machine, even if I was paid to.
 
Maxtor probably sells millions of their HDDs so although many many people report problems, odds are good you wont have any problems yourself.

Having said that, I have experienced a Maxtor death first-hand less than a year since I bought it.

As long as you keep regular backups of your data, you shouldn't worry too much.

SiriusB
 
I've only ever had one HD die on me - it was the only Maxtor I've ever bought.
The amount I hear about them dying (particually 80Gb IDE jobs), I'm never going to buy one again.
 
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I'm looking at a dead 160Gb DiamondMax Plus 9 on my desk right now. It's out of warranty and I'm ** out of luck I guess.

To the original poster - I wouldn't lose sleep over it though, chances are good you'll have no problems. Check the SMART status once a month to get early warning (good plan for any make of drive).
 
Thing is, there's so many users on this forum that even if only 1% of Maxtor uses have a problem, that's still hundreds of broken Maxtors.
I don't think you can get a fair overview from posting this tbh.
Still, it's pretty clear that people CAN have a problem!
 
As with other 250Mb fast SATA drives Maxtors run hot. It's no different to issues with first 10k SCSI drives and first 7200RPM ATA drives. Simple advisory is to cage them in cooled unit. And it goes for any 250-500Gigger. Out of all drives at work and at home, Maxtors were always the most reliable and could withstand the maddest overclocking. I had two failing C: drives in my home rig in 6 months due to overclocking, Western Digital and Samsung, both SATA, both went down with the same symptoms - transfer rate would fall to 2-3Mb/s, massive slowdown and then they would start dropping sectors and failing to read until drive becomes impossible to format. Never ever had a Maxtor do something like that, never ever had a Maxtor that would give me less than 3 years of hard service (with small exception of first re-branded Quantum drives).

Then again, I still have the infamous 25Gb IBM "Deathstar" that would die on everyone, mine is A.D.1999 and after years of spinning in my rig it now serves in external USB box, not a single problem, not a single bad sector.
 
Personally I'd say no Maxtors aren't that bad, I've currently got 3x 200gb drives sitting in this PC and they have been absolutely fine but equally other people do have problems with them so it comes down to personal experience. As an aside the oldest drive that I still use on a semi regular basis is a 6gb Maxtor in my old Windows 98 based PC which works as well today as it ever has so they can certainly last :)
 
Maxtor's aren't that bad at all, as people have said, they sell an awful lot of drives, more than any of the other hd companies and thus they have a lot of failing drives, it's still a tiny percentage of the total though. I think it's fair to say Maxtor have had some problems with particular models of drive failing more than would be typically expected, various models of the Dimamondmax 9 range spring to mind.

I've got 3 x 300Gb Maxline III's here, and they are all fine so far, the oldest has put in a good few years service.

Incidentally I've still got a 20Gb IBM Deathstar that works fine, although it isn't used anymore. I've also got a 6.4Gb Maxtor built sometime around the end of the last millennium, which works fine, although it does make that old school Maxtor clatter when seeking, they all did though :p

Only drive I've ever actually had 'fail' on me was a Samsung Spinpoint 160Gb, bear in mind I had 2, 1 was over a year older than the other and the older one still works fine, it serves me day in and day out in my secondary machine, no problems there but one, the newer one which wasn't much more than 14 months old failed on me ...just one of those things really.
 
Moeks said:
Really? ...well then I apologise, I thought that Maxtor were :)
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Maxtor do have a large share of the low end consumer market but it would be unfair to say they are waaay out there. Seagate in total are, I am led believe, the biggest HDU manufacturer of all, and most certainly bigger than Maxtor whom they bought this year.
 
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I guess I might be different but in years of computer use, I have NEVER had a hd fail. This includes models that are well known for failing, Fujitsu's, IBM's...etc. etc.

In fact, the only items I can remember failing on me are dvd writers/cd writers, had a couple of them fail!
 
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