BuddhaTB wrote:I personally have been very happy with the last 3 Maxtor drives I've owned and they're all still running. Maxtor and WD are at the top of the Hard Drive world.
For the sake of a purchaser's peace of mind, I feel some current info on Maxtor should be inserted here.
Do with this info what you wish.
The CEO at Maxtor recently stepped down.
The reason for Maxtor having one-year and three-year warranties is due to "similar but not identical" parts. (meaning cheaper?)
Now, some info on their weird warranty practices.
Keep in mind, I currently am running 26 Maxtor drives. I am currently running ~$8,000 in Maxtor product.
Per Maxtor's wording, EVERYTHING I am running that I bought is from "quality" (my words) parts, not the new Maxtor models and such.
I have RMAed I believe a dozen drives in the past two years. (50% failure rate on the 98196H8 model...)
The warranty periods have always been fine on the 98196H8 replacements. Recently, though, the 98186H8 models are now being replaced by 4G100J5 models. (100GB drives, kinda cool, kinda not... if running RAIDs, not necessarily cool at all...) But, the 4G100J5 drives come with their own new 3-year warranty. Hence, the warranty on those drives is now turning into FIVE-year warranty!
Kinda cool!
BUT...
When you get to the more expensive, newer models (not newest models), things start to change...
My 4G160J8 drives (good parts, three-year warranty) are being replaced by 6Y160L0 drives (one-year, lesser-quality drives... perhaps the fact that is has a manuf. date of just three weeks ago is supposed to impress me?) Yes, unless Maxtor corrects this (maybe they will, maybe they won't), I am being shorted on the warranty that influenced my decision to buy the drive...
Either way, superior parts are being replaced by inferior parts it seems to me...
BUT, it led me to notice something even more interesting...
Out of 26 drives, NONE of the warranty periods printed on the drives are reflected accurately on Maxtor's website. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
Some are longer (two give a full extra year!).
Half are being short-changed by 4+ months.
The older a drive, the greater the degree of being short-changed.
I wasn't sure if this nugget of info may influence your "hot deal" perception of Maxtor.
Oddly enough, I can Ebay the 6Y160L0 drive (with one-year warranty) and have enough money (and change afterwards) to buy a NEW 4G160J8 with a 3+-year warranty still on it!
And I have read where the 4G160J8 is outperforming the 6Y160L0 anyway... (5400rpm outperforming 7200rpm? What is Maxtor doing?)
Maxtor no longer makes the specs available on their drives. Some model numbers are built from three different makes. This not only effects performance, but can effect RAID configs if the LBAs of the drives are not identical. (this is the reason I will not slap the 6Y160L0 on my RAID, as I am not certain of its exact LBA without using it... Nothing like rippin' it open and it being worthless for my situation...)
But since there is so much discrepancy in their warranties, and I own so much Maxtor product, I'm going to try and get them to explain what on Earth they are doing...
But I feel they are clearly doing some odd-to-questionable business practices...