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Are Maxtor Drives OK? Loud?

K

Kano

Senior member
Hello,

Found a sweet deal on a 60gig maxtor. In the past I have owned them and hated them -- too loud! Are they still that way? My last experience was with a 15giger a couple years back.

Any experiences?

Thx!
 
I have many Maxtor hard drives at work, both 5400RPM and 7200RPM, and all of them are quite silent. Also have a 5400RPM Maxtor at home, an old 8 gig, and its still quiet, even after a few years of work. Also, if your drive were to ever fail, I think that Maxtor/Quantum have the best RMA policy. Other people may have different opinions, this is mine.

Russell "Mr.Bios" Sampson
 


<< I have three Maxtor 7200rpm drives, and I can hardly hear them. >>

yah, i have 2 7200 rpm ones and i cant hear them at all. dead silent.
 
Love maxtors too. Mine is really quiet, but one or two that I have put in my friends' systems have been a bit gurgly. I guess you get lucky, but hearing other threads on the topic I would think that maxtors are generally quiet hard drives. I pretty much would only buy maxtor, but I'm interested in those seagate drives now too.
 
Maxtor bought out Quantum. If you get a Quantum-Maxtor, it will be loud. Quantum drives are fast, but very loud while seeking.
 
in a far far away universe of a long long ago there was a harddrive named maxtor which at the time was 1.2gig, 1.6gig and 2.0gig and was priced 229, 289, 339. all these drive very extremely noisy and looked more like a tin can then a harddrive. 😀 they also ran at 4475 RPM which is slightly better then connor's line of harddrive that ran at 3600 rpm. today, the tincan maxtor has evolved into performance and quietest drive ever made with this new technology called acoustic quiet operation that greatly reduces noise but at a cost of 25 percent of the harddrive performance. There is a utility on their website that allow you to change it to performance. there is 3 setting from 1. quietest slow access time
2. somewhat quiet slightly better seek time. 3. fastest seek time but extremely noisy.
their default is 1.
when I change it to 2, it make a little noise so I change it back to 1. slow but hell no noise is better.
 
I absolutely love Maxtor drives. They are silent, good quality and good price. I even love their support. I accidently f***ed up a drive and I called them and they gave me an RMA number and where to ship it and stuff. A week or so later I got a hard drive and they replaced it with one 2x the size of the drive that I RMAed. I sent a 20 and got a 40. HOW SWEET!!

linman
 
Maxtor's have some acoustic management software, meaning they'll run slower but quieter or faster but louder.. you get to make the call.
 
Maxtors are generally VERY quiet. If noise level is important, I'd
recommend Maxtor to you emphatically.

Er, that is, REAL Maxtors. Maxtor recently purchased Quantum, and
Quantum drives are (were) RIDICULOUSLY loud. Some people have reported
buying a retail Maxtor and finding a Quantum drive in the box.
THAT would suck if you care about noise level.

Kwad
 
If you get a Quantum-Maxtor, it will be loud. Quantum drives are fast, but very loud while seeking.

Agreed. A few years ago I used to use a Quantum Fireball drive. It was really fast but it was quite noisy too.
 
Don't get the new D740X if your concerned about the noise 'cause that is one of the loudest drives right now. You can prolly use Acoustic Management to mitigate from the noise, but the drive will lose it's edge.
 
I disagree with the statements that Quantum drives are too loud. I personally own a Quantum Fireball AS 7200RPM hard drive, and I can't even hear it over my 4500RPM fan on my Athlon 1GHz. Now, I have had experience with the previous Quantum 7200RPM line, I believe is was called the Fireball KA, and that was quite noisy. Also, I have heard the new Maxtor D740X, and it is every bit as quiet as my Quantum AS drive, even at the highest performance setting.

Russell "Mr.Bios" Sampson
 
Those complaining about Quantum's noise probably havent heard of the Fireball Plus AS, its noise level is quite low, though Im not claiming it matches IBM or Maxtor originals, but the noise level is definitely more pleasant than the KA or LM which people are probably more familiar with. The Maxtor D740X is available with Fluid Dynamic Bearings as an option, with that, the D740X can be very quiet and still deliver the best performance.
 
Yes I have set up a bunch of systems with Maxtor 7200 diamondmax plus series and they are good, fast, and very quiet.
 
I bought a few of the Quantum LM drives back in the good ole Buy.com coupon days. I liked the speed of the drives (VERY fast), but they were the loudest IDE drives I have ever heard. They sound like a SCSI when seeking. I bought a 40 Gig Maxtor a few weeks ago that turned out to be a Quantum AS. This drive was for a coworkers PC I was upgrading. I was surprised on how loud it was. Not like the LM, but WAY louder than my 60GXP. The 60GXP is practically silent. I don't hear any noise at all when it's seeking. The Quantum AS still has the crunching Corn Flakes sound. The Quantum drives don't have a rotational whine sound like some other drives I've used. Its the noise they make while seeking that I hear. I haven't had a chance to check out a D740X yet, but Storage Review commented on it being noisy when seeking as well.

Noise is a personal preference kind of thing. My entire system is close to silent. The seeking noise of a HD is actually not all that bad to listen to. The noise is not constant, so its tolerable, but not preferred. A drive that has a rotational whine on the other hand, drives me up the wall. The Quantum drives fit into the former category. If you want a quiet drive, the IBM 60GXP, WD BB, and the new Seagate Barracuda IV are good bets.
 
My experience with my maxtor 60gb 7200 rpm has been so great that I would buy exclusively Maxtor. You can't even tell its even there --- even under the fullest of hard drive usage! And their RMA policy is great, too... always a plus.
 

I have a 30 Gig Diamondmax 6800 Plus (something like that) that is about 2 years old. It's just as quiet now as when I bought it - barely hear it.

I have an older IBM drive 13 gig that is quiet for about 3-4 months twice (it had to be replaced.) It's quite loud now, sounds like there are little marbles in there. I hate that!
 
As for hard drives, if they are the loudest component in your rig, you don't have noise issues.

The new maxtor drives are nice.
 
i own a maxtor 30gb and 40gb, both 7200rpm.
the 30gb is absolutely silent....when it reads/writes it makes no noise whatsoever. my 40gb makes the standard crackling noise when reading/writing....however it's not loud at all
 
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