(Dead) Maxtor 160GB 8MB Hard Drive with FREE ATA/133 PCI card $69.99 AR & coupon at Staples

[Whitneymuse]

simMike2 said:

I went to Maxtor's site and got drivers for the Ultra 133. When I put the card back in, I didn't mess around and let Windows "search for drivers (recommended)" I pointed it right to the XP drivers I downloaded. Everything worked fine after this.

right you are. When you first install this card, you should take your boot drive and install it on the mobo's primary IDE port and install it a PCI slot. Let Windows 98/XP find it, install the appropriate drivers and then reboot. You can then attach your drive to the primary IDE of the ATA card. Be certain to also change the boot sequence of your mobo's BIOS switches. My sequence is A, then SCSI, then C...it doesn't have a PCI/IDE stage.

 

[huesmann]

I picked one up yesterday at the Staples on the corner of Wisconsin Ave and Bradley Blvd in Chevy Chase, MD. I think they had at least one more. Used a printable $30/150 coupon no trouble.

 

[DaHan]

Originally posted by: omega99
I have the epox 8rda+ mobo.
should I use the ata card or not?

No need for 8rda+. Just plug in.

 

[Keltron]

Originally posted by: JoeFoster
For people who mention their harddrives prior to this one dying, how did that happen?


I have had a 40 GB Deskstar for over a year and a half. What can cause a harddrive to die?

If it is a 75GXP model, you need to very carefull. this model had a lot of problems and IBM was sued over it. I had a 40GB deskstar 75GXP. It died after an year and a half

 

[chocoruacal]

Originally posted by: Askalon
To anyone that did get in on this deal if you find yourself not needing it or just wanting to sell it I am willing to pay up to $120 Shipped for a new sealed unit, slightly less for an open box. must be the 7200 RPM 8 MB Cache version to fit the other three I currently have raided into my system.

Sent you email...I've got one from this deal that I was going to return.

 

[Whitneymuse]

I had a 40 GB (actually 46.1 GB) 75GXP IBM die just about at one year and a quarter, too. Went out for an hour and came back to hear the periodic sound of what can be described as the "muted quiet" of finger nail scratching on a LP record made of chalkboard. I was reading a thread about this drive at Storage Review and a poster had recorded their experience with the infamous 75GXP; sounded exactly like what I heard. The suit mentioned is filed in Alameda County, CA Superior Court 2001-027510 Dec 11 2001. Sheller, Ludwig and Badey of Philadelphia are the P counsel if anyone wants to get the filing. I believe it's amended to a class action now.

Anyone have a website able to host the "IBM sound of death" LOL

 

[huesmann]

So you can get your $0.25 after all the lawyers' fees?

 

[vicdoc]

Picked one up at Greensboro, NC at the Golden Gate St. store, there is one left. It will be $80.44 including tax after MIR and $30 off $150 email coupon. Good deal!

 

[nulak]

These drives are still in stock and I just placed a phone order for this hard drive. I was even able to apply an online coupon ($30 off $150) over the phone. Total after taxes and rebate is $77.44 with free shipping (2nd day delivery since the drive was in another state).

 

[MorganNY]

Mine came in the retail box with the 133 controller card.. HOWEVER
the card is garbage! The performance with the drive on that card was WAY below that of my WD1200JB
when I moved things around so that the maxtor was master of the secondary controller of my MB controller, the drive was on par with my WD.
ALSO, having switched things around, I put my Liteon 32123S 32-12-40 CD/RW drive on the maxtor controller
and as soon as I tried to open cdrwin, my computer locked up. then I couldn't even get to the desktop on successive tries. When I pulled the card out and replaced it with an ultra ATA 133 raid card I'd bought elsewhere, computer booted up and the cdrw burned cds withought a hitch. Anyone who feels badly that their maxtor didn't come with a controller is welcome to mine, gratis.

in this case, the free ata card was worth exactly what I paid for it.

Good luck and good deals to you all

 

[zuffy]

Originally posted by: MorganNY
Mine came in the retail box with the 133 controller card.. HOWEVER
the card is garbage! The performance with the drive on that card was WAY below that of my WD1200JB
when I moved things around so that the maxtor was master of the secondary controller of my MB controller, the drive was on par with my WD.
ALSO, having switched things around, I put my Liteon 32123S 32-12-40 CD/RW drive on the maxtor controller
and as soon as I tried to open cdrwin, my computer locked up. then I couldn't even get to the desktop on successive tries. When I pulled the card out and replaced it with an ultra ATA 133 raid card I'd bought elsewhere, computer booted up and the cdrw burned cds withought a hitch. Anyone who feels badly that their maxtor didn't come with a controller is welcome to mine, gratis.

in this case, the free ata card was worth exactly what I paid for it.

Good luck and good deals to you all

I didn't try the Maxtor controller but from the look of it, it's a Promise controller. I ran into a similar problem as you, but with 2 different Promise controllers. In my Dell 4550, I have 2 hard drives, a DVD drive and a CD burner. I want each of the drive to be master in its own channel. The thing is that any intensive i/o will lockup the system. It will not matter if the hard drives are connected the mbd IDE channels or the Promise controller. Once the Promise controller is removed, no more lockups and the performance is better in a Master/Slave setup.

 

[SpanishFry]

Item was OOS on the website for me, but I just called it in and it will be shipped to me Wed. AR the total will be $83.44.

 

[OoteR02]

So, what i'm getting out of this.. is if i CALL into the staples number on their site, they can ship the drive? staples.com says its OOS every time i try to buy the stupid thing. Will they take the online coupon over the phone? If so.. i may still have a chance at this drive

 

[SimMike2]

I think the Ultra 133 Promise controller included in the kit works good. The performance connected to the controller is on-par with my onboard EIDE of my Epox 8RDA+. I've noticed my computer is smoother when hard drive stuff is happening on the two drives connected to the PCI controller. My boot drive is connected to the onboard EIDE so drive transfers between the other drives connected to the controller doesn't mess up my operating system speed. This will come in handy when I am editing video.

Over the years, I have usually preferred onboard EIDE channels for my boot drive. This is because various Promise cards over the years seemed to be a little more CPU intensive, I would get subtle stutters with my mouse and stuff.

What I used to measure hard drive performance yesterday with the little test that Nero will put your drives through. All three of the drives, one connected to onboard EIDE and one each on the two Ultra 133 channels, got similar performance.

 

[zuffy]

Originally posted by: zuffy

Originally posted by: MorganNY
I didn't try the Maxtor controller but from the look of it, it's a Promise controller. I ran into a similar problem as you, but with 2 different Promise controllers. In my Dell 4550, I have 2 hard drives, a DVD drive and a CD burner. I want each of the drive to be master in its own channel. The thing is that any intensive i/o will lockup the system. It will not matter if the hard drives are connected the mbd IDE channels or the Promise controller. Once the Promise controller is removed, no more lockups and the performance is better in a Master/Slave setup.

OK, I said what the heck and gave it a try. I took the Maxtor controller out of the static bag and put it in my Dell 4550. I have the Maxtor 160GB connected to the onboard, WD 80GB to the Maxtor Controller, and kept the DVD and CD burner as Master/Slave to the secondary onboard. Did a few simultanteous copies between the 2 drives and there is no lockup! With the previous Promise controllers, it will lockup the moment I start the second copy between the drives.

 

[SethK28]

back in stock on webpage

 

[vtqanh]

out of stock again arggg

 

[WolverineGator]

Just in time. I was running out of space on my tiny 120GB hard drive.

Forget online... I just placed a phone order with no problems!

 

[OoteR02]

so like i was asking.. phone order = go?

 

[Viper22]

Bowie, MD store still has one left on the shelf....picked up mine a little while ago..had no problems using the printable $30 off $150 coupon. $77.44 once i get my rebate back. Thanks!

Viper22

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Whitneymuse
I have these drives working in my systems. They are three Maxtors (160/8, 80/8 and an 80/2) a WD SE (80/8) and an IBM 180 GXP.

For the first 4 days of the WD SE's installation, it made this low-level grinding noise upon every initial boot up, then died away to nothing. I called WD technical and the only thing they offered was to RMA the drive. Checked it out with some software tools (IBM and WD's) and it showed OK so I kept it. Within a week, no more sounds on boot up. The Maxtor 160GB did the same thing for the first day, then it was noiseless. I thought it was something to do with the 8 M cache, but that's mere speculation and haven't read anything to support it.

Now they are all quiet even in their seek and read modes (and I've got good hearing). If you have a stethoscope or any type of tubing, you could actually place it on the drive housing itself to listen to the noise and if it still is bothering you, RMA it. I've found IBM, Maxtor and WD all pretty good about sending you another drive. Maxtor will even send you a replacement drive and you can send the RMA'd one back within 30 days with no charge to the credit card they take for this service. You may even get a brand new one if they haven't any replacements available.

Finally, I'm reluctant comments about these drives. The last time I stated that my IBM 75GXP seemed to be immune from the periodic 'clicking' failure after a year and a quarter of operation, I got the same failure. They sent me back the newly minted 180GXP.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and state that the noises that you are hearing, if they suddenly "disappear" after a few days, and the HD seems to work fine afterwards with no recurrance of the noise, are probably due to the way that the drives are configured to operate after being shipped fresh from the factory. At least for Maxtors, they are programmed by default, for the first 10 power-on cycles, to keep write-verify enabled. Also, they (and I think WD's too), are configured to run a SMART offline scan of the entire drives surface. This scan will pause during a drive's normal use, and then resume when it is idle. It will continue to restart and run, until it completes, no matter how many times the drive is powered-down in the meantime. So basically, just leave it running for a few hours and let it finish. It shouldn't come back, unless you manually use a tool to re-enable SMART offline periodic scanning.

Also, IBM 180GXP models are known to perform some sort of diagnostic in firmware every ten minutes of drive operation, so that noise is "normal" too.

The only thing that I might be worried about, is how loud that "grinding" noise you state is. If it's not head-movement due to the internal SMART diagnostics, and is actually a real, loud, grinding noise, then you might consider RMA, although I would think that it would re-occur if there were a bearing problem. Sometimes, bearings need to "seat" for a few days, and then they will be mostly quiet for the further life of the drive motor/bearing assembly, untill they wear for a few years and start whining.

 

[Askalon]

Originally posted by: tmung
Dumb question: If/when I buy this drive can I use the controller card to use it as a third drive? I have been putting off buying a bigger HD for a while, but my current two just aren't cutting it. The problem is that I am too lazy to back up everything with my inconsistent and lam CD-RW drive and I have no other method of back-up for the volume of data I would need to back-up. So can use the controller card to just tack on an extra drive or will I need to invest in an external drive too (something I have been thinking about, but would rather avoid)?

I didn't see a response so i thought i would chime in on this. yes you can use it as a third (and fourth) IDE Controller. in my server I currently have a 20 GB drive, a CD Burner, a CD-Rom, and Three 160 GB Drives (running off the included card), all IDE. As soon as I get a 4th Drive I will place that in it also. I love my raided server btw.

 

[Whitneymuse]

VirtualLarry:

Thanks for the information. I'm willing to go with your explanation. It's odd that technical writers haven't commented on this before, because it's loud enough to be disconcerting. I even called Maxtor technical and the TSR flatly denied any break-in or knowledge of what that could be. I had the conversation with the WD technical and all he said was that they'd be more than glad to do an RMA.

As I had spent several hours loading it up with systems and then knowing that I'd more than likely get a redone/remanf'r drive, I elected to let the drive "seat in" and that apparently is what happened. All during that time, monitoring programs such as IBM-badged Smartdefender (which is an OnTrack program I think) couldn't find anything wrong.

Thanks again for commenting.

 

[alpha366i]

this drive gets pretty damm Hot after about 20 minutes of use.
Is this normal??
my old hard drvies never get this hot

 

[SimMike2]

this drive gets pretty damm Hot after about 20 minutes of use.

You should have some kind of fan blowing over your hard drives. Lots of cases have room for a front mounted fan which blows in over your hard drives. Or you can get a separate drive cooler.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php Speedfan is a handy utility which will tell you how hot your drives are, in addition to your CPU temp. It's free.