Maxtor 250GB $133 @ CompUSA, no MIR!

[TheCDBurner]

http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... pfp=BROWSE

Wow, wish it was a WD instead of a Maxtor. Still, great deal.

[aviationwiz]

What? You would actually want a WD HDD? Wierd, the only good HDD WD has made is the Raptor, for anything else, Maxtor is the best.

[TheCDBurner]

I disagree. I have a Raptor, plus a 120GB WD, and 3 Maxtors. The Maxtors are junk. Slow, hot, loud...and I've had one die on me. I'll stick with WD.

[tazdevl]

What? You would actually want a WD HDD? Wierd, the only good HDD WD has made is the Raptor, for anything else, Maxtor is the best.

WD Special Editions... had good luck with every one. The Raptor is a great drive BTW.

[MadBurner]

Sorry Aviationwiz, but I have to disagree with you here. Maxtor has let me down quite a few times with hard drive failures but Western Digital's Special Edition drives have always been good to me!

MB

[TheCDBurner]

Ahh, backup has arrived

WD is about the only PC-component manufacture that I have any brand loyality with. Intel or AMD? Which ever is faster. ATI or nVidia? Fastest, please. Hard drive? WD only! Only reason I ever got those Maxtors, is 1) my roommate paid for them, b) they were cheaper.

Having used WD's since the days when 540MB drives where HUGE, I'll stick with 'em.

Edit: Ok, I'm loyal to NEC & Plextor when it comes to burners, Lite-On for DVD-ROMs.

[Boba_Fett]

I've had nothing but problems with Maxtors (I've had 2 die on me within a year, inexcusable). Nowadays I only trust Seagate and WD for desktop PATA/SATA drives. Nice deal BTW TheCDBurner

[aviationwiz]

I've had problems with WD HDD's ever since the day's that I can remember. The Raptor is good, but that sums it up. My current fleet:

WD Raptor 36GB
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB SATA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB (8MB Cache) PATA
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB (8MB Cache) PATA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB (2MB Cache) PATA Unused


I once had a WD 80GB HDD a few years ago, it didn't work, I exchanged it twice, so I went through 3 Hard Drives, tried a Maxtor, worked automatically, it was a problem that the WD wasn't capable of working with my other Maxtor in my system, as, quite frankly, the WD was inferior.

WD has greatly improved, but I'd only go to them for the Raptor.

[jpuntel]

I did a pricematch at Staples on this deal. knocked it down another $7 . Here's the good part : I had a coupon mailed to me from Omax from there MaxPerks program. $10 off $50 on your first visit to Omax. I gve it to the Manager at Staples and she read it, we both agreed the first visit stipulation was bizarre but, she said O.K. PM from CompUSA, coupon from Omax. thought I was in the clear when the register said it couldn't do both. The manager said she didn't know why it was a problem, she brought out some coupon voucher book from her office had me fill out my name, address, phone gave me the $10 off and sent me on my way $119.77 tax inc. out the door. Why the longwinded post? didn't save that much$$$ It was great to see a Manager give a shit about a customer and go the extra mile to get the job done. I thanked Her twice and went on my way.

[vinnie97]

I must echo the sentiments about the WD special edition drives. I have a 60-gigger from 2002 that is very much a workhorse. I don't have any particular qualms with Maxtor either.

[dolphinius_rex]

I've had more Maxtor drives die on me then any other HDD type... but I've also had a lot more Maxtor drives. I've never had a seagate drive die on me, but I've only owned one or two. I've only seen a few dead WesternDigital drives, and they were all older then me, so I wasn't shocked.

My current analysis of HDD makers:

WesternDigital: Really good, hardy drives... but are they worth the price?

Seagate: I trust these a little more then Maxtor made drives. I find them reliable and speedy.

Maxtor: I buy a lot of these because they are cheap, and I don't really have any complaints about them. They can be fast, and good drives too. The newer models are quite nice! My SATA drive is a maxtor and is also my favourite HDD right now

IBM: I have one of these... it's 80GB and the slowest thing I have. If it wasn't for the large capacity it would be back sitting on my desk being used as a paper weight, where its' already spent a great deal of time being. I would NEVER buy one of these again! My mother bought one with me at the same time I bought mine, and her's has died and been replaced on warrenty twice! The warrenty is now over, but so far this one has worked for her. I know I'll trade mine out as soon as I get a new HDD, but due to the drive's size, I'll probably still keep it around for non-essential file storage (like TV shows and movies).

[lightningbaron]

Thanks for the heads up, but don't want a Maxtor. I'd prefer a Seagate or Western Digital.

A Maxtor 160GB died on me about 3 months and they do run damn hot, great for frying eggs.

[fng]

I saw this at fry's this weekend for 129 no rebate. Also, they had a Hitachi 250gb for 99 after rebate.

[BuddhaTB]

I find Maxtor drives to be reliable but somewhat louder than other drives. For my next HD, I'm getting a Seagate.

[bac]

I find Maxtor drives to be reliable but somewhat louder than other drives. For my next HD, I'm getting a Seagate.

You can configure the maxtors to be quieter with 'amset /quiet'. But yes, I'd have to agree about seagate. Too bad they don't yet have any ata disks > 200gb yet.

[aviationwiz]

Seagate's nice

Bloomington, Minnesota:
The Recording Heads operation, with worldwide manufacturing facilities, is headquartered in Bloomington, and is Seagate's internal and principal supplier of recording heads. The division's leading research and development capabilities continually push the technology envelope - allowing the company to design and develop industry-leading advanced read/write heads for disc drives. Disc drive head technology is one of the most precise, complex, and dynamic technologies in computing, since it is the disc drive head-no larger than a grain of coarse sand-that writes, saves, erases, receives and sends data.

Rochester, Minnesota:
Seagate's Internet Solutions Group opened a software development division in Rochester in February 2000. The 20-employee team develops software that supports internet solutions for two areas: The emerging storage area network (SAN) market and the server appliance market.

Shakopee, Minnesota:
Seagate's Product and Technology Development center, located in Shakopee, is home to advanced technology research for products that will hit the market in about three years, and for the development of enterprise-class disc drives.
Enterprise drives are high performance and high capacity disc drives used by businesses, typically in large servers that store a company's critical data or for the storage needed by servers that run the Internet.

Some of the industry's firsts have been designed and developed in Minnesota including the 5,400 rpm, 7,200 rpm and 10,000 rpm disc drives as well as the industry's leading-edge product, the 15,000 rpm disc drive. The 15,000 rpm drive is widely recognized as the world's fastest drive.

[TheCDBurner]

I had 3 year old Seagate die on me awhile ago; it's the only Seagate I've ever had. It was huge for the day: 40MB (yeah, MEGAbyte, not Gigabyte!). It was in a killer system: i286/12Mhz, 640KB RAM, 256KB VGA card...ahh, those were the days

At least it ran Wolf-3D pretty well!

[wicked1]

I have 3 maxtor 160's 1 wd se 250 and one 8 gb wd in my computer. I have had 1 160 fail.

[pchilson]

A few years back when I did tech work at a computer shop the largest percentage of failed drives we saw was Maxtor. Not to say we didn't see other bad drives.
I have a neighbor who is an engineer for Seagate. He knows the industry, according to him Maxtor has excellent technology but they have big problems with manufacturing quality control, hence the high number of drive failures.

I have owned all the brands and have had failures with all of them.
My best luck has been with WD drives as these have given me the best reliability to date.

Hard drives are the most mechanical component in your system and is the most likely to fail regardless of brand.

[LoneWolf]

I have not had a Caviar SE go bad on me yet. Have owned two 80GB's (sold one), a 200GB model, and recently bought the 40GB version for the machine I've put together for my fiancee'. Fast, and reliable. Only thing I've seen Maxtor beat WD on is noise, and that's only with the newer Maxtors with fluid bearings. Older ones are loud, and I've had an average reliability rate with them over time.

I used to love IBM up until the Deathstar fiasco. From their 1.7GB drives up until the days of about the 20GB models they made some great stuff. After their problems, I'm reluctant to touch even current Hitachi stuff. Seagate has had a rocky history for me. I haven't bought their current drives, but I saw a lot of them with average performance, and sub-par reliability, made much worse for a time after they bought Conner.

[drbeanz]

hey guys, what a hot debate!

I have a 120 GB SATA Maxtor....so far very fast , quiet and reliable.
The workshop in my university received quite a lot of problems from WD HDD (ATA 133), relative to Maxtor and Seagate.

But who knows, sometimes it is also a lucky matter.

How you guys think about the HDD (SATA/ATA133) from Samsung.
Neweggs got a lot of excellent ratings from this brand, especially the
newer SATA mode.

I would like to try it this summer.

[TheCDBurner]

Newegg has 160GB Samsungs for $91. Pretty good deal! I'll be ordering one in about a month for a friends PC I'm building. Haven't heard anything negitive yet, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed

[aviationwiz]

I was going to get a Samsung, but heard they were absolute crap, so I held out until I found a Maxtor on sale.

[pchilson]

I was going to get a Samsung, but heard they were absolute crap, so I held out until I found a Maxtor on sale.

I don't know if I would call a Samsung "crap", might be to glowing of a review for them...

[LoneWolf]

Current Samsung is supposedly rated much better than older Samsung, but I will say that while I love Samsung for some products (monitors, which are excellent IMO), hard disks aren't one of them. They're on the list of HDD's I won't buy, along with Fujitsu (exception: server-class SCSI), and (before they went bankrupt a long long time ago when some of you might have been in grade school ) Kalok, the worst hard disk manufacturer that ever existed.

Apparently Samsung does have a 3 year warranty on all their drives though, so if the drive isn't intended for mission-critical data (i.e., temp directories/pagefile) it may be worth looking into.