Possibly rather extreme, but understandable. My mentioning of the new configuration is relevant to the lengthy discussion we had a couple of months ago. And there are many here who are using Maxtors in making their living.

Had a 300 gig Maxtor IDE conflict with Plextor 716A so gave it to my guru buddy and he is using it just fine. Seagate (dropping sectors), IBM (front end dead), Medea (bad), Western Digital (dropping sectors). I have 6 other Maxtors that work just fine.
JJK

I think EVERY HDD manufacturer has had bad bunches at some time or another. We've sure got a blend of them around here, and can't say any one brand has had more or less failure than others. WD perhaps, fails more, but we have more of them.

I would say that that sounds about right, The more you have of one particular drive, the more that brand of drive will fail :)

well said Spot.

Dave

Most drive failures are caused by insufficient cooling.

That's the #1 problem with user-installed drives.

Absolutely 0.0% thought is given to cooling, "because it's just a harddrive."

I have always paid attention to this, after seeing real-life competent large scale statistics from corporate installations, and have only had one drive fail out of more than 20 over the last 7 years, and it wasn't a WD which is otherwise most of my drives.

I just had a SeaGate 200GB drive Crash & Burn.

They replaced it PDQ. (2weeks)

I usually go with SeaGate or WesternDig.
NEVER again will I use LACIE!

LACIE BAD... Very Very BAD!

I had my Maxtor I fail on me. My Maxtor II's were following the same pattern. So I went ghetto on it, and placed a vornado fan on top of them, set it to low speed, and continued working.

Allz I can say is that... izzz all good.

As long as my clients don't see it, then I'm safe. Good temporary fix for now.

I recently bought 2 Samsung 300g drives at CompUSA for 100 a piece. while standing in the checkout line, a tall techy guy behind me said, "I'd never buy one of those drives unless they had at least a year warranty. We use them at work and they fail all the time." We checked the box and the warranty was for one year. He promptly got out of line and bought 2.

Funny, but I've never had a video drive (out of about 20) fail but still, redundancy is the key. That's why I bought 2. I would shudder at the thought of archiving my video on only one drive!

I also have several Lacie drives that have served me well, one for over 4 years. Usually my drives are run as USB drives from a laptop. I don't know if that helps the heat issue or not, but it may be one of the reasons I haven't had failures.

had 8 out of 10 LaCie porche drives go out. Turns out to be bad firewire ports on the drives. LaCie replaced a few and then when I wanted them all replaced they scoffed... cracked open the remaining drives and have them running sucessfully in ADS tanks - fyi in case you're having issues with these drives.

cheno

You are aware that Seagate took over Maxtor a while back, don't you?

I have 2 WD firewires and 2 reborn Cobras--the Cobras were taken from their housing when it seemed they were failing and after I put them into two new ADS Tech firewire enclosures they run like new again, and quieter.

I quickly learned to separate the WD 'convection' drives so there's adequate air circulation--they each stand on end with about 2 inches between. Mfr. says you can stack them like pancakes but it makes them run awfully hot. Also removed my ADVC 100 converter off the top of one of them and stood it separate on its end, and it too stopped running hot.

Still leery about buying a Maxtor after all the heat stories. Can't help but wonder if the cure of the new fan is enough, or perhaps just a patch.

I keep having to remember that IBM drives are now Hitachi.

Maxtor has just been bought by Seagate, per Los Angeles Times today.

All Maxtor products will be discontinued, with only Seagate products going forward.

This could mean limited support for Maxtor products bought today.

Maxtor was acquired thru a stock deal, not assets only purhase. So, all Maxtor contracts and products still have a valid life. Any contract or product can be changed or drop, but lawsuits would include the old Maxtor board and the new Seagate board + management and be very expense for Seagate. Seagate management seems to be very smart and cost control minded, I doubt that they will create an image problem or employ more lawyers for case action lawsuits since they are cutting over 800 employees from their payroll.

Virtually all of Maxtor's US employees are let go also, so support may not be what it was.

About half of Maxtor's 12,800 positions will be eliminated, Woody Monroy, a spokesman for Seagate, said.

Caveat emptor.

I use my maxtors as paperweights now, they're all shiny and silver.

kind of like aol cds, for coasters.

never again will I buy maxtor anything. ever. period.

ken