is maxtor really as bad as ppl say?

[Thermalrock]

since the seagate barracuda 400 wont be for sale till at least december i am thinking 300gb maxtor with 16mb cache. i owned western digitals seagates quantums mactors, ... ive never had a single hdd break. but i keep reading bad stuff about maxtor. are they really that bad?

 

[Markfw]

Well, almost every driver I currently own that is not SCSI (about 12 of them) are Maxtors. The only one I ever had die was a 200 MEG Maxtor that was 10 years old. I don;t think there is anything wrong with them.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Depends. People here seem to have worse luck than with other brands , but all brands have early failures and some (even IBM "deathstars") last years beyond their warranty.

I've had a pair of Maxtor 250 GB drives in my FLAC music server for almost 2 years now, and they're still humming along.

 

[WobbleWobble]

My personal experience with Maxtors has been great. Most of my drives are Maxtor and I've had no problems whatsoever.

 

[Thermalrock]

ya my maxtors ran like 3 years and would prolly still run had i let em. after contemplating alil i figured the 300gb maxtor is only 199 euros anyway so if i dont like it i can just get the seagate 400 in january

 

[TopAce]

From my own personal expierence, it seems Maxtor's run the most quiet. Although Western Digital as got many people attached to them with their popularity is the Western Digital Rapter 10,000 RPM.

Ace

 

[joecool]

i don't know what 'ppl' say, but i've had good luck with maxtor drives. in fact, of all the drives i've ever owned over the past 10 years (ibm, wd, maxtor, seagate) a single seagate is the only drive that ever had any issues. i do think maxtors are loud, tho. i've got all seagate now and even tho one flaked out on me i'll be sticking with them because they are whisper quiet - can't even tell it's powered up!

-joe

 

[Acanthus]

5 maxtors bought, 0 running now.

20+ seagate bought, 1 failure (and the drive was 5 years old)

9 WDs 1 failure (again, the drive was 4+ years old)

I never bought IBM/Hitachi because of the deathstar rumors.

-Acanthus

 

[AmdEmAll]

I had a 10gb 7200rpm maxtor that was potentially dieing. It had huge hours on it though. Warranty covered it.

I wouldn't trust IBM/Hitachi or WD anymore.

 

[waitman]

I've got 3 or 4 dead western digitals, I have 3 maxtors one has run 4 years almost 24/7 the other 2 have run over 2 years 1 24/7, the other just runs several hours a day. Still got a couple seagate drives over 5 years old that run fine

 

[gsellis]

I have not had media issues with Maxtor. I have had firmware issues. That is on 80GB (much older - it is a M/S vs CS issue) and 8GB.

IBM - Stiction and media problems (including track 0 failing on lots of 10GBs)

W/D - No real issues except a batch of 400MB drives that were replaced

Seagate - Stiction with a MFM (that would be 1989). No other serious issues.

Toshiba mobiles - sector damage, but give them a break as they are in laptops and abused.

 

[CrackRabbit]

Seagate>Maxtor>Samsung>Western Digital>Hitatchi(IBM)

 

[beatle]

I've no problems with them. More importantly, I like their RMA process.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I deal with a decent sized network, around 300 pcs and 100 macs and we use a variety of hard disks, the only issues I have had that set any drive apart from the others is the fact that the seagate 40gb drives are somewhat slower than the WD and maxtor drives and the IBM drives that were in the macs die pretty regularly....

 

[0roo0roo]

my wd failures match my mxtor failures

 

[Subhuman25]

I've had several Maxtors fail me and those I've built 'puters for in the past in short time.Life expectancy prior to failures were all <2 years,a few <1 year even.
The only HD's I'd rate worse than Maxtor are Fujitsu &amp; Quantum(wich I think became Maxtor anyways didn't they?) &amp; IBM "Deathstars".
I've also had a WD fail me in shorter than expected time (around 1 1/2 IIRC)
Only ones I haven't ever hada problem with sofar are Seagates.And I might add that I'm rather happy with the performance &amp; silence of them also.

So to answer the OP's question,YES,they are as evidenced by my personal experience.

 

[Texun]

This is what I call a "Ford Vs. Chevy Vs. Dogde, etc" thing. Somebody somewhere really likes one more than the other based on their experience. Seagate usually gets the most praise for being the best of the best, but my experience has been quite the opposite.

Maxtors - 10 with 2 fails after 3 years.

WD - 5 with 3 fails within 30 months.

Seagate - <drum roll.... > 5 with 3 fails either DOA or failing within 7 months.

I'm using Samsung now, a 120 and a 160. Both are dead silent and so far holding up okay, but they are less than a year old so I can't say I am sold on them yet.

All drives were IDE and used in a home PC environment. Nothing heavy or special required.

Also worth noting- Maxtor and WD had a great RMA process and turnaround time, but that was a long time ago. Seagate customer service was way beyond what I expected. It took all of 3 minutes to speak to a real person and everyone I spoke to was helpful. They did a great job getting my RMA's out very quickly.

 

[uOpt]

Bought three 160 GB Maxtors in February.

The second one started to give read errors at the end of the drive yesterday, after the first one is completely dead by now.

The 60 GB and 40 GB Maxtors I have for years run great (I bought the faulty 160ties based on that, of well).

 

[Sunbird]

Well, my experience is that new (read 2004) Maxtors are the ones that have been giving troubles. Have some 4 to 2 year old ones at home and at work and the all still work well, no problems at all.

So, my uneducated opinion would be that Maxtor must be having some more recent manufactering diffuculties, resulting in bad batches of drives perhaps?

I'm sticking to Seagate at the moment.

 

[PumpActionWalrus]

7 Western Digital 6 failures, all 6 were wd800 5400 rpm drives. 5 maxtor over the years, pretty quiet, 0 failures I have a 2 gig drive that still runs in a system, Seagate has been good to me, Ive had seagate for many many years, longer than others, they replaced the Western Digitals, The new 7200 rpm drives are the most matured and the quietest on the market. Samsung drive is horrible, which is why it is in my mothers computer. Go for the maxtor man, I have read great things and it is huge + quiet

 

[Zero Plasma]

bump

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: PumpActionWalrus
7 Western Digital 6 failures, all 6 were wd800 5400 rpm drives. 5 maxtor over the years, pretty quiet, 0 failures I have a 2 gig drive that still runs in a system, Seagate has been good to me, Ive had seagate for many many years, longer than others, they replaced the Western Digitals, The new 7200 rpm drives are the most matured and the quietest on the market. Samsung drive is horrible, which is why it is in my mothers computer. Go for the maxtor man, I have read great things and it is huge + quiet

The 5400 RPM drives are in no comparison to this day in ages hard drive manufacturing. You can't possibly use those old examples and how they reflect on the current market.I remember those Quantum Fireball hard drives, I believe Maxtor made, failing on me plenty of times. Seems like every major hard drive manufacture has developed their manufacturing process enough where they all make dependable hard drives.

How much noise, heat, and their performance under extreme environments is another story.

 

[Sunner]

I've had pretty bad luck with Maxtor, but on the other hand, I've had pretty good luck even with the dreaded DeathStars(the 75GXP's that is, I dont count newer members of the family), so that only goes to show how much anecdotal experiences really matter.

 

[Antoneo]

For what it's worth, out of the drives I have owned (11 drives) Maxtor was the only one to die. Just a few months after their warranty expired as well.

 

[PCHPlayer]

Anecdotal evidence means nothing. If a manufacturer had a 75% failure rate as some have stated, they would be out of business. I personnally would only believe the return rates from large distributers (I used to get inside info from my wife who was the harddrive buyer for a large distributor), but that only gives you DOA/early failure data. Only the manufacturers know what failure rate they have and you can be sure they hold that data very close to the vest. That being said here's my data:
4 WD, 2 failures
1 IBM 60GXP, 1 failure
2 Maxtors (current drives), 0 failures *crossing fingers*