Home News Reviews Forums Shop


Maxtor SUCKS!

In depth discussions on hard drives, SSDs, RAID setups and network storage systems.

Maxtor SUCKS!

Postby TheCDBurner on Mon Jun 07, 2004 1:50 pm

Not to add anything to the (several) little WD Vs. Maxtor threads that have been here lately, but I just had ANOTHER 60GB maxtor bite the dust. (That, for the count, is *3* out of 4 60GB Maxtors that I had).

100% Western Digital from now on!
User avatar
TheCDBurner
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 195
Joined: Tue May 18, 2004 7:08 pm

Re: Maxtor SUCKS!

Postby XXXXX on Mon Jun 07, 2004 3:02 pm

TheCDBurner wrote:Not to add anything to the (several) little WD Vs. Maxtor threads that have been here lately, but I just had ANOTHER 60GB maxtor bite the dust. (That, for the count, is *3* out of 4 60GB Maxtors that I had).

100% Western Digital from now on!


LOL....just to throw in my two cents. I had two of the WD 160GB-JB 8mb cache versions that were both less than 6 months old in my water cooled, and extra fan cooled PC, that each failed about a month apart. They were both fully warrantied, and the replacements have been running for about 8 months with no problems, but it reminded me of the importance of having Optical media backups.

I have 3 other IDE & Promise Card internal HD's that are Maxtor, WD, & Seagate that have had no problems for about 2 years in the same rig. One of the WD drives that failed was on slave of secondary IDE, and the other was on master of the Promise IDE card. Both had the same extra fan cooling blowing on them as the adjacent drives.

Also, make sure you have adequate fan cooling because using an 8 temp wire probe setup with a DigiDoc monitor, the probes taped to the Hard Drives get hotter than any component I am running, except for the Vantec Stealth 520 Watt Power Supply monitor. I also have monitors taped to my Radeon 9700 Pro, Athlon 2700 CPU, and Corsair PC-3500 DDR. And make sure the blow hole is not blocked on any HD.
Kerry is the most liberal US Senator in Washington, who has more of a sourpuss disposition than Lieberman.

He sucks the way he flips and then flops...which is why he will be defeated!

Where do they get these guys?
User avatar
XXXXX
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 146
Joined: Fri May 28, 2004 11:03 am

Postby stricklando on Mon Jun 07, 2004 3:23 pm

I have a maxtor 160HD with the ATA 133 PCI interface tthat hasnt been working since I bought it. It would only format to 33 gigs. I tired several different ways to install it and all of them failed. I also had a a total of 6 different people try to no avail. Then when I called Maxtor, they keep asking for an error # and would not accept that the drive was faulty and needed replacement. I have a 120 gig Maxtor that has been working just fine for the last 2 years or so. Lesson learned- no drives larger than 160.
stricklando
Buffer Underrun
 
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2002 10:12 am

Re: Maxtor SUCKS!

Postby Shredder on Mon Jun 07, 2004 4:10 pm

TheCDBurner wrote:Not to add anything to the (several) little WD Vs. Maxtor threads that have been here lately, but I just had ANOTHER 60GB maxtor bite the dust. (That, for the count, is *3* out of 4 60GB Maxtors that I had).


I have several Maxtor drives that I have been using for several years and I have no problem with them so far except they are little noisy compare to WD and Segate. Hard drives tend to fail alot and fast with poor computer power supply and bad cooling/airflow within the system. However, most common reason for hard drive failure is the dust buildup inside your computers, specially around hard drives. Most hard drives can die from dust static. Anyways, one of my computers' hard drive is pretty old Maxtor 10GB drive, it's still working with no problem yet.
User avatar
Shredder
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 156
Joined: Tue May 04, 2004 7:38 pm

Postby smartin4 on Mon Jun 07, 2004 7:30 pm

At work we had a pair of 200GB WD fail within 3 days of one another. Aside from that, I have had little trouble with WD.

I have four Maxtor's at home and have had no problems, work is a different story.

Eight months ago, we bought 33 new Dell Optiplex GX 270s: 3.2GHz P4, 1 GB Ram, 40 GB Maxtor hd in each. As of today we have had 11 hds fail and need replacement (no repeat offenders either, 11 different computers)! That is 1/3 of the computers that we bought !!

I called tech support today to get the latest 2 replaced, and told him I wanted to speak to someone in customer service about this issue, he transferred me to CS, who told me they couldn't help me and transferred me back to tech, who then told me to call our account rep. Still waiting to hear back from him....
User avatar
smartin4
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 296
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2002 11:24 am
Location: New Jersey

Postby TheCDBurner on Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:18 pm

I've never had an WD drive fail (IBM though!), I've been using WDs since the 540MB drive was brand new.

As for cooling: this system has a fan blowing air directly across the drives (with filter), the PSU is a 480 Watt Antec, hooked into an APC UPS.

Every product, from any manufacture, can and will fail. Nothing is perfect. I've had bad luck with Maxtors; I know some have had bad luck with WDs. I remember WD had a bunch of their 40GB drives die awhile ago; I had four of those in an old system (with piss-poor cooling in that system), and those drives are still going strong. That IBM 60GB I had lasted only about 3 months.

Had a Seagate die once; but then, it was 5-6 years old, and was a HUGE drive when it was made: 40MB. Replaced it with that 540MB WD :)

I am, at the moment, considering buying a 300GB Maxtor external. But in light of yet another drive death, I'm reconsidering. However, being a 5400RPM drive, it should be a little less troublesome. Not sure I want to chance it, though.
User avatar
TheCDBurner
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 195
Joined: Tue May 18, 2004 7:08 pm

Postby XXXXX on Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:44 pm

I really think it is a crap shoot about HD's failing. Those two WD drives were the only I have had fail out of at least 120 HD's over the last 20 years....going back to the pre-HD 5 1/4 floppy drive IBM PC
Kerry is the most liberal US Senator in Washington, who has more of a sourpuss disposition than Lieberman.

He sucks the way he flips and then flops...which is why he will be defeated!

Where do they get these guys?
User avatar
XXXXX
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 146
Joined: Fri May 28, 2004 11:03 am

Postby eliminator on Tue Jun 08, 2004 4:37 am

I just switched to Hitachi, better price + 3yrs warranty ! 8)
User avatar
eliminator
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 1150
Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2002 4:15 am
Location: TheLoneStarState

Postby TheWizard on Tue Jun 08, 2004 8:38 am

For those of you that have had several drives by a particular brand fail or have had problems with certain drives, did it ever occur to you that the problem could be on your end? If a computing environment is unstable to begin with, it doesn't matter which part you add to it, chances are it will perform poorly.

I have owned several drives from Seagate, WD, and Maxtor. Only one of them failed right out of the box, and yes, it was a Maxtor. I called up Maxtor's customer service line, told them the problem, and they shipped out a replacement drive immediately. I received it later the same week. Does this mean I have stopped using Maxtor? No. Truth be told, I still have several Maxtor drives going strong. And, if anything, after witnessing how quick and courteous their product replacement service is, I would buy from them again. I like a company that takes care of me. Even though I received a bad drive, and they crop up now and again, it has not become a trend with Maxtor.
No, I like women.
TheWizard
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 2074
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2002 6:56 pm

Postby Boba_Fett on Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:31 pm

TheWizard wrote:For those of you that have had several drives by a particular brand fail or have had problems with certain drives, did it ever occur to you that the problem could be on your end? If a computing environment is unstable to begin with, it doesn't matter which part you add to it, chances are it will perform poorly.

I have owned several drives from Seagate, WD, and Maxtor. Only one of them failed right out of the box, and yes, it was a Maxtor. I called up Maxtor's customer service line, told them the problem, and they shipped out a replacement drive immediately. I received it later the same week. Does this mean I have stopped using Maxtor? No. Truth be told, I still have several Maxtor drives going strong. And, if anything, after witnessing how quick and courteous their product replacement service is, I would buy from them again. I like a company that takes care of me. Even though I received a bad drive, and they crop up now and again, it has not become a trend with Maxtor.


Consider yourself lucky. In my fairly educated opinion, HDDs operate fine within even the most extreme operating enviornments (heat-wise). Its just that, for the most part, they fail for absolutely no reason! I've had 2 maxtors go bad on me within 1 year... all that data lost still makes my stomach curl. I personally believe nowadays (like, within the last 5 years) it is just shoddy parts used in all but the most elite HDDs (top of the line SATA and SCSI). It is probably cheaper to offer 1 or 2 year warrenties with regular 7200rpm drive that have a average life of 1.5 years than to go ahead and make their HDDs last 3x that or more. It really sucks... the one component that you need integrety in most of all in your PC is also the one most likely to go. Fiddlesticks :(
eVGA NF4 SLI mobo
Opteron 165 Dual Core 1MB cache @ 2.5ghz
2GB Mushkin DDR PC4000
2x160GB & 1x250GB 7,200RPM SATA w/NCQ
eVGA Geforce 7900 GTO 512MB PCI-e
Pioneer 111D 16x DVD burner
Onboard Sound :(
User avatar
Boba_Fett
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 401
Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2002 8:06 pm
Location: Middle of Nowhere

Postby TheWizard on Tue Jun 22, 2004 1:11 pm

Boba_Fett wrote:In my fairly educated opinion, HDDs operate fine within even the most extreme operating enviornments (heat-wise)


Ah, but there are so many other variables to consider, not only heat related stuff. :) Maybe the drive was slightly damaged during shipment, either from the manufacturing plant in Singapore to the Maxtor warehouse or from the Maxtor warehouse to the Staples warehouse (just using them as a hypothetical example) or from the Staples warehouse to a Staples store.

all that data lost still makes my stomach curl


Backup, backup, backup. This is vital. Never trust anything to one and only one source.
No, I like women.
TheWizard
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 2074
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2002 6:56 pm

Postby Boba_Fett on Tue Jun 22, 2004 2:35 pm

TheWizard wrote:Backup, backup, backup. This is vital. Never trust anything to one and only one source.


Oh, believe you me... I have learned that lesson the hard way. Now if only we can see some dual layer, dual sided DVD-18 recordable media come out at a reasonable price here pretty quick ;)
eVGA NF4 SLI mobo
Opteron 165 Dual Core 1MB cache @ 2.5ghz
2GB Mushkin DDR PC4000
2x160GB & 1x250GB 7,200RPM SATA w/NCQ
eVGA Geforce 7900 GTO 512MB PCI-e
Pioneer 111D 16x DVD burner
Onboard Sound :(
User avatar
Boba_Fett
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 401
Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2002 8:06 pm
Location: Middle of Nowhere

Postby Spoonlord on Thu Jun 24, 2004 6:03 pm

I just recently had a WD1800 fail on me. Fortunately I was able to get all the data off. This drive was very loud from the beginning. But it started to act up during a defrag. Basicly it just stopped. It would come back but it would always die again. I got all my data off and wiped it, complete reformat to NTFS, put in external enclosure but it died again.

I purchased this drive in Feb 2003 and it failed in May 2004. So you can guess what WD said. As I paid $150 for this drive I was more than POed. But they kept up the same ol song and dance, "your drive is out of warrenty".

Thus, WD has lost me as a customer forever, plus as I have some sizable influence in the computer purchases for my organization I will be sure that no WD drives are purchased. My revenge will be to live well and do everything I can to deny them sales.
Spoonlord
Buffer Underrun
 
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 11:27 am

Postby Scour on Sun Jun 27, 2004 4:38 pm

Hello!

I have Maxtor-drives in use for years without any problem, but I heard that teh Diamondmax 9-series have problems.

But I don´t can say that WD-drives are more reliable, i had bad experiences with WD.

My friend´s IBM-drives failed often, Samsung is also not real good.

The best experiences i have with Seagate. Not always the fastest, but real reliable
Benq DW 1640 and 1650 , Plextor PX-755, Pioneer BDR-208 and 209D, LG GH24NSC0, LG BH16NS40 and 16NS55, Liteon ihas 124F and 324F, Pioneer DVR-215 and S21, Samsung SH-224DB and 224GB, and some more

cu
Scour
Scour
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 1933
Joined: Wed Nov 07, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Germany

Postby Kennyshin on Sun Jun 27, 2004 4:41 pm

When I want to have the most reliable HDD, I choose Samsung. When I want the cheapest HDD, I buy WD's. When I need performance, Hitachi's the answer. :D

Maxtor's expensive, slow, and unreliable, especially so in South Korea. :D

I'm not talking about performance alone, but also company polices regarding distribution channels, prices, and warranty.
Kennyshin
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 1173
Joined: Tue May 14, 2002 12:56 am

Postby aviationwiz on Sun Jun 27, 2004 5:41 pm

Or, if you need a combination of cheap, reliable, & fast, just get a Maxtor in the first place! :wink:

I have only heard bad things regarding Samsung Hard Drive, and WD isn't cheap! :lol:
User avatar
aviationwiz
Plextor Fan(atic)
 
Posts: 4069
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2002 2:55 am
Location: Home of the Red Tail

Postby Scour on Sun Jun 27, 2004 5:54 pm

Kennyshin wrote:When I want to have the most reliable HDD, I choose Samsung. When I want the cheapest HDD, I buy WD's. When I need performance, Hitachi's the answer. :D

Maxtor's expensive, slow, and unreliable, especially so in South Korea. :D

I'm not talking about performance alone, but also company polices regarding distribution channels, prices, and warranty.


Samsung and reliable? I don´t think so :(

In Germany is Samsung the cheapest, Hitachi and Seagate the more expensive HDD´s, depends on the size in Gigabyte
Benq DW 1640 and 1650 , Plextor PX-755, Pioneer BDR-208 and 209D, LG GH24NSC0, LG BH16NS40 and 16NS55, Liteon ihas 124F and 324F, Pioneer DVR-215 and S21, Samsung SH-224DB and 224GB, and some more

cu
Scour
Scour
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 1933
Joined: Wed Nov 07, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Germany

Postby aviationwiz on Sun Jul 04, 2004 5:38 pm

Funny that we've had hard drives as a topic in this forum lately.

Just had a Western Digital 20GB from about 2.5 years ago die on me. :(
Shitty WD.
User avatar
aviationwiz
Plextor Fan(atic)
 
Posts: 4069
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2002 2:55 am
Location: Home of the Red Tail

Postby lightningbaron on Mon Jul 05, 2004 1:06 pm

My Maxtor 160GB died within 3 months, returned it via warranty and got one back, so no complaints about the warranty service, but I have had bad luck with Maxtor. In the same PC, I have a Western Digital 100GB running at least 2 years and Seagate 80GB running at least 1.5 years with no issues. No one manufacturer is perfect, I never RMA'ed a drive from IBM Deathstar. I have RMA'ed 2 drives by Western Digital and 1 drive by Seagate. Otherwise, any dead hard drives have been replaced instead. My goto for hard drives is Seagate.
User avatar
lightningbaron
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 121
Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2002 8:48 pm

Postby CowboySlim on Mon Jul 05, 2004 6:37 pm

Lightningbaron came back - my favorite avatar (but it's not wiggling today).

I agree, nothing but Seagate for me from now on.

Slim
User avatar
CowboySlim
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 1868
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2003 3:58 pm
Location: Huntington Beach, CA

WD For Me

Postby digitaldoc on Tue Jul 06, 2004 2:17 pm

I still have a 10 year old Western Digital 1 GB hard drive that works!

In my newest system I use a Western Digital 160 GB with the 8 mb cache. Great drive, has been up and running for 6 months now. I also have a Western Digital 120 GB external usb 2.0.

Never was thrilled with Maxtor or Seagate.

WD's drives are great, but their included tools are useless.
BTC 1008
BTC 316c 16x dvd-rom
LiteOn 52327S
LiteOn 52246S
Plextor 12x10x32
Benq 4816P
HP 7200e (retired)
User avatar
digitaldoc
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 107
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2004 5:46 pm

Postby wicked1 on Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:03 pm

I have 3 Maxtor 160gb's,1 Maxtor 250gb,1 WD 250gb in my main PC. I have had 1 Maxtor 160 fail in the last few years but was quickly replaced via a cross ship.My case has 7 80mm fans and is watercooled. 2 80mms blow over the hard drive stack but they are still a little warmer than I'd like. The maxtors definately are hotter than the WD. They are all 7200RPM 8MB models. I dont really have a preference though. Whatever is on sale at the time I need to expand is what goes in my computer.
Pioneer dvr-108,NEC 3540,BenQ 1640,LiteOn 1693S
Intel pentium D 930 oc to 4.2 ghz
2 gb ddr2 1066 mhz ram
geforce 7600GT
sb audigy 2 zs platnum
hardware mpeg2 encoder card

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good
User avatar
wicked1
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 831
Joined: Tue May 27, 2003 7:26 pm

Postby integspec on Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:43 pm

When it comes to HDD, it could only be SG. It used to be Quantum for me long time ago. When Maxtor took over Quantum, I switched to SG and never looked back. Didn't think Maxtor was bad, but at that time I had mostly worked with Quantum and Seagate. WD has the highest percentage of failures in my experience (Anybody remember that HP, Compaq and few other vendors had to change WD PC HDDs in batches years ago?) . Additionally, all of you guys who come from Wintel or other server backgrounds would know that server manufacturers always go for Seagate.

Cheers.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty. - Richard Lovelace
integspec
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 302
Joined: Thu Dec 19, 2002 8:57 pm

Postby pachi on Sun Jul 11, 2004 1:23 pm

i have 2 Max and 2 WD and never had a problem with them...like someone said..cooling is important...
pachi
Buffer Underrun
 
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 11, 2004 2:54 am
Location: Miami fl

Postby Spazmogen on Sun Jul 11, 2004 3:33 pm

I've owned 3 Maxtor drives, a 1GB, 4.3GB & 40GB. All run fine.
I've also got a 20gb IBM, 60GB WD & 160GB WD.

I've never had a drive fail at all. My system is seldom off.

I lucked out with the 160gb WD, it's got a 3 year warranty. I bought it on Dec 25th this year. It also came with an ATA100 card.

The WD 60gb has a 1 year warranty, which I'll extend shortly for $14.95
e6400 Core 2 Duo @ 2.13ghz
GeForce 7600GT 256mb PCI-e
2gb DDR2 667mhz Patriot ram 1.8v in d/c
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 F10 BIOS
WD Caviar SE16 250GB SATA300 7200RPM 16MB Buffer
Samsung SATA2 80gb 7200rpm
Samsung SH-S182D 18x DVD burner
User avatar
Spazmogen
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 1472
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Woodstock, Ontario

Next

Return to Hard Drives and Solid State Drives (SSD)

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

All Content is Copyright (c) 2001-2024 CDRLabs Inc.