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Rant: Maxtor Hard Drives

F

Fireball77

Senior member
Well my newest Maxtor went out today....I was lucky enough to hear it's violent death.....sad, sad, day. 60 GB gone....most of it backed up.....Every single Maxtor drive I have had, has died on me.....luckily I have had them all replaced thru RMA. But still every drive I have had has died on me. Have people had these experiences with Western Digital Drives? I am getting fed up replacing a drive every year, and losing all my data. 🙁
 
Strange that I can't sympathize with you, since all I've had in my computers are Maxtor drives (roughly 10 or so over the years) and have only had one "die" ... it still works, just can't be set up as a boot drive.

Who knows?
 
I've only had one maxtor b4, and it's still runnin fine albit a old 30GB, i've had a Western Digital go bad on me, so i RMA'd and sold it on ebay becuz i figured it'd happen again, becuz it was the bearings noise issue so many people complain about. SO i got a Seagate, which has a little bit noiser seek times, but DEAD SILENT bearings and I love it! Overall though, it's just luck of the draw a lot of the time, i've had best luck with seagate and never good luck with IBM, (friends experiences), and never had a Maxtor fail on me but on the new ones i cant stand the seek noise. And western digitals well it's up to you.
 
I've had 2 western digtal drives go out on me... but the replacements have been running fine, and the total of 5 I have are working flawlessly for the time being...

I had a 40 gig maxtor.. nice drive but I like western digital drives better for some reason.
 
I feel your pain... I've RMA'd both Maxtor drives I've owned... a 40 GB and an 80 GB... sold the replacement for the 80 GB on eBay... using the 40 GB replacement in my 2nd rig. Both of those origional drives I bought at Best Buy though... coincidence?
 
Originally posted by: Jeff7181
I feel your pain... I've RMA'd both Maxtor drives I've owned... a 40 GB and an 80 GB... sold the replacement for the 80 GB on eBay... using the 40 GB replacement in my 2nd rig. Both of those origional drives I bought at Best Buy though... coincidence?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily coincidence, since about half of my Maxtors (and not the one that actually "died") are/were from Best Buy ... like wetcat007 said, it's just luck of the draw a lot, I guess. These days, hard drives are almost made equal and are roughly as good as each other, IMHO.
 
Fireball77, are you sure you don't have a lot of power line surges where you live? I have been using Maxtor Hard Drives for years and years along with WD and Seagate and even Quantum. I have only had one Maxtor get bad sectors and it was a used drive and many years ago. I run most of my systems 24/7 and use the heck out of them too daily and never a problem with a Maxtor untill the other day. Due to a lot of Air Conditioners on in my city the power failed for 10 minutes and when it came back on there was a large surge that caused many people I know to have things blow and not just computers. My 40Gig ATA133 7200 RPM Maxtor came up with so many errors after the power surged on that I had to format and reinstall the system on the C Partition. Funny thing is the S.M.A.R.T is now so messed up that the system asks me to press F1 to continue boot so I had to turn off SMART in the bios but the drive otherwise passes every other test from Maxtor except it says the S.M.A.R.T can not be executed! Strange but it was fine till the power surge.

Also is your power supply ok? Have seen bad Power Supplies take out HDD's also. How are these drives failing? Mechanical or Electrical?? In other words problems reading the data or the Bios no longer sees the HDD?

From all my tech work over the years I have seen every brand fail from time to time but have had more problems with dead Quantums and a few older WD's then anything else except for of course the IBM 75GXP series. Had very good luck with Seagate except for the 2.1 Gig Medalist of days gone by! Otherwise not a problem with any Seagate.

Maxtors though have been very reliable for me. Check for power supply problems or surges. Do you have a UPS on the computer?

 
I agree with the luck of the draw thing. I have used several IBM hard drives and they've all functioned perfectly, yet many people have had bad experiences with them.
 
all of mine were from Staples.....retail versions..... no OEM....I do believe they are made equal....all of my replacements have worked great....the sad part is, I buy these knowing that they are going to go out out of the blue......just never know when.
 
Originally posted by: TheInvincibleMustard
Originally posted by: Jeff7181
I feel your pain... I've RMA'd both Maxtor drives I've owned... a 40 GB and an 80 GB... sold the replacement for the 80 GB on eBay... using the 40 GB replacement in my 2nd rig. Both of those origional drives I bought at Best Buy though... coincidence?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily coincidence, since about half of my Maxtors (and not the one that actually "died") are/were from Best Buy ... like wetcat007 said, it's just luck of the draw a lot, I guess. These days, hard drives are almost made equal and are roughly as good as each other, IMHO.
Click to expand...

The 40 GB maxtor drive would have been 1 year old about now, and the 80 GB would have been about 9 months old about now. =)
 
Originally posted by: Fireball77
Well my newest Maxtor went out today....I was lucky enough to hear it's violent death.....sad, sad, day. 60 GB gone....most of it backed up.....Every single Maxtor drive I have had, has died on me.....luckily I have had them all replaced thru RMA. But still every drive I have had has died on me. Have people had these experiences with Western Digital Drives? I am getting fed up replacing a drive every year, and losing all my data. 🙁
Click to expand...

I'm curious, what has been the cause of death on the hard drives? Bearings give way or what?
 
Originally posted by: Fireball77
Well my newest Maxtor went out today....I was lucky enough to hear it's violent death.....sad, sad, day. 60 GB gone....most of it backed up.....Every single Maxtor drive I have had, has died on me.....luckily I have had them all replaced thru RMA. But still every drive I have had has died on me. Have people had these experiences with Western Digital Drives? I am getting fed up replacing a drive every year, and losing all my data. 🙁
Click to expand...

Had the same problem, which is why I stopped buying maxtor products a few years back. I've never had a WD drive die on me. My first 8GB WD drive is still chugging along in my parents basement. One of my old 30GB is in my little bros system, where it performs admirably. The other 30GB was sold with my old 1Ghz Tbird system. My old 80GB storage drive sat idle for over a year while I went thru basic training, it now resides in my current rig pulling its old storage duties again. My primary drive now is a 120GB WD hdd. 🙂
 
I think drops and surges kill.
As does over-heating (but that's VERY easy to fix).
The only drives I've known to just like dying were old (stopped around 10GB I think) Seagate and Quantum IDE drives.
I typically use only WDs, and have had no problems, except for one bad from the factory.
You guys might want to try getting a UPS.
 
9 months and 43.75 mhz PCI bus on my four, 80gb Maxto,r 7200RPM 8mb cache drives. I eat WD drives like candy, yet the Maxtors hold. I believe it's your system, not the drives, sorry to say. Don't expect the WD to be any better in YOUR system than any other. Once youfixe the problem, then you can find which drive you like the best.
 
well I dont think it is my systems.....I have had one die in the 5+ systems I have owned. Even my new Dell at work, the 40gb was dead within a year....and it was just normal usage, everything else was store on the server. The one that died today sounded like a bearing, it made some rattle noises, I was able to backup a few things, and then I started getting windows write errors, then I rebooted, then the drive never showed up again. As for the other......usually it was just instant death, no warning or anything. So, I am thinking I may try a Western Digital, just to see if I have better luck.....the reason I kept buying Maxtors was because of their RMA support.....but now that their warranties are only a year.....I need to look at other options.
 
Originally posted by: Fireball77
well I dont think it is my systems.....I have had one die in the 5+ systems I have owned. Even my new Dell at work, the 40gb was dead within a year....and it was just normal usage, everything else was store on the server. The one that died today sounded like a bearing, it made some rattle noises, I was able to backup a few things, and then I started getting windows write errors, then I rebooted, then the drive never showed up again. As for the other......usually it was just instant death, no warning or anything. So, I am thinking I may try a Western Digital, just to see if I have better luck.....the reason I kept buying Maxtors was because of their RMA support.....but now that their warranties are only a year.....I need to look at other options.
Click to expand...

Well all hd companies have gone to 1 year warrenties unless u buy their 8mb cache drives, then u get the 3 year warrenty.

But damn I must say you've had worse luck with hard drives than anyone I've ever known.
 
I did not know that 8mb cache drives are 3 yr. cool, I am needing a 80+ gb drive.......there needs to be a program like Motherboard monitor for hard drives.......that way we can at least have some warning.....I heard Spinrite 5 may actually warn about failures, but I have not figured out how to use it yet

Here is my hard drive death tally.
4.3gb Bad Sectors - RMA
(2) 10gb Stopped Working - RMA
20gb Stopped Working - RMA
40GB Stopped Working - RMA
60GB Bad Bearing/Stopped Working - RMA

At least they have all been replaced.
 
Have two WD hard drives in my system now, one new, one well over two years old....zero problems.

Had a number of them in the past as well and have never had a single drive die...had a 2 gig version that lasted a full 8 years before it was time to upgrade...it still worked flawlessly. (BTW, took it apart and took out the magnets, those are fabulous!😀 )

Good luck to ya.

moogs
 
Originally posted by: mooglekit
Have two WD hard drives in my system now, one new, one well over two years old....zero problems.

Had a number of them in the past as well and have never had a single drive die...had a 2 gig version that lasted a full 8 years before it was time to upgrade...it still worked flawlessly. (BTW, took it apart and took out the magnets, those are fabulous!😀 )

Good luck to ya.

moogs
Click to expand...

lol yeah the magnets are fun to play with from old hd's becuz their insanly powerful 🙂
 
ive had 4 hdd's, an IBM, a quantum, maxtor and now a seagate, never had one fail.

people getting 3 bad hdd in a row just arent, they have something else that's killing them. comeon, what sort of statistics for dead hard drives do you think it takes to kill a hdd business? the deathstar alone finished it for IBM.
 
you say you had 4 hard drives, but you have had 4 different brands....so to say something else is killing them is unfounded. I have had all mine die in different system configurations.....Everything surge protected.....Hard drives are the only things I have had that have just up and quit on me. Not even a bad motherboard.
 
Originally posted by: Davegod
ive had 4 hdd's, an IBM, a quantum, maxtor and now a seagate, never had one fail.

people getting 3 bad hdd in a row just arent, they have something else that's killing them. comeon, what sort of statistics for dead hard drives do you think it takes to kill a hdd business? the deathstar alone finished it for IBM.
Click to expand...
Ditto.
I've seen...
3 dead Quantum HDDs, between 4 and 8GB (so pretty old) die inside a year or two, in HPs. Given my experiences with these machines, I'd call them PSU deaths.
1 Dead WD 6.4GB. I used it in my machine, files backed up, for almost 6 months before it got really loud and started 'sticking' on spin-up. Hadn't fully died when I chucked it.
1 Dead WD 80GB JB, bad from the get-go, stopped formatting at 64%, WD's diagnosting also stopped at 64%, same behavior on different motherboard. RMA in progress (got the cheapest mail USPS would track 🙂)
...and I've (a) never lived in a house with less than 2 computers, and (b) my father is currently a sysadmin, so that's an amazingly small proportion of hard drives. Hell, my one HDD death is now out of at least 9 hard drives, and that's just counting back to my Duron box, and all have been 2nd-hand.
 
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