is it me or are Maxtors total crap?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lisa Horton
  • Start date Start date
L

Lisa Horton

Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
 
Lisa Horton said:
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

I bet its not as noisey as my 3gig Western Digital, I bought exrta ram
and moved files on to my quiter old drive to silence it.
The older drive has a faint rustleing of leaves sound whilst the new one
sounds like a cross between creaking floor boards and an old grandfather
clock mixed in with the grinding of a cars gearbox!! Wanna swop!

I think 5400 drives have no temp probs but 7200 have more of a
heat 'issue', don't they have a fan too?
 
I bet its not as noisey as my 3gig Western Digital, I bought exrta ram
and moved files on to my quiter old drive to silence it.
The older drive has a faint rustleing of leaves sound whilst the new one
sounds like a cross between creaking floor boards and an old grandfather
clock mixed in with the grinding of a cars gearbox!! Wanna swop!

I think 5400 drives have no temp probs but 7200 have more of a
heat 'issue', don't they have a fan too?
Click to expand...

My Western Digital 200GB is fairly noisy... Its that special Edition
one with the 8mb cache. Anyway, sounds like a traink clacking around
on the tracks.
 
Most mfg's produce bad drives every now and then. My experiences (all
approx.):

- 50% failure rate for Seagate Medalist Pro 7200 RPM IDEs (ran HOT)
- 35% Western Digitals Caviars gone bad, (back in 800 MB to 1.x GB days)
- 20% IBM 75GXPs, some 60GXPs too, all other IBM IDEs 100% reliable
- 10% Quantums, different releases
- A couple Micropolis out of about eight or so (owned less than the rest)

By no means does this represent real-world failure rates. I don't think
I've had a single Maxtor fail, but I've purchased just a few actually.
Compared to hundreds of the others.

The reason I stay away from Maxtors are:

- Sometimes buggy/incompatible firmware
- Often there are significant differences between OEM and retail (can't
always tell what you're getting when you buy OEM)
- Usually other drives are faster, or provides better value

As for noise (drives I've purchased):

- IBMs quietest, by far, except for 75 GXPs that develop
screeching/scatching noise
- Maxtors/WDs, about the same
- Quantums, LOUD seek noise, almost always

Heat:

- The 7200 RPM Seagate Medalist Pros ran VERY hot
- All others about the same, usually cool, but normally I purchase
drives with the least amount of platters.

The operating temp will vary according to the ambient temperature.
Sometimes a drive with a bit of air hitting it will stay very cool,
taken out of the case in a room about 78 degrees fahrenheit, it will run
very hot.

I'm partial to IBM/Hitachi, but I don't think you'll go wrong with
Wester Digitals.
 
Harry Edwards said:
My Western Digital 200GB is fairly noisy... Its that special Edition
one with the 8mb cache. Anyway, sounds like a traink clacking around
on the tracks.
Click to expand...

LOL, glad its not just me then, nice to know its a 'feature' rather than a
desgn
fault. I was very worried it was about to fail so I kept the old one as a
'mirror',
just in case, maybe I will make use of the 2gig on the old drive now when I
pluck up the courage to delete the back up data!!
 
I've had my maxtor 80Gb for four years. Never had a problem and never heard
it. Except for when I was running a virus scan an adware scan and a defrag
all at the same time. It is great. Never had one problem.
 
Didn't Micropolis have a problem about 10 years ago with bad motor bearings
from a supplier that wound up killing their drives? I know I had a
Micropolis 4 Gig back in 1995, and the original died, and was replaced under
warranty, and about every replacement would die quite expectedly about 6
months after installation.
 
Lisa said:
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...


I am getting in a high proportion of Maxtor drives in for repair. But
this might just be the fact that they are so popular and common, rather
than any inherent problems.


Odie
 
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

The answer to subject is "no", they work fine. Can't help but think
you're doing something wrong, perhaps inadequate cooling or poor power
supply.

As for noise, the Quantum-based D740 series was indeed relatively noisey,
but modern fluid-bearing versions are quieter than other's with
ball-bearings.
 
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

Temp is OK. Its just you.
GG
 
Lisa Horton said:
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

I've had the best luck with Maxtor drives. I used to be a big Western
Digital fan, but I gave up on WD drives after getting 3 bad ones in a row.
All failing within days of warranty expiration.
 
Nivek said:
I've had the best luck with Maxtor drives. I used to be a big Western
Digital fan, but I gave up on WD drives after getting 3 bad ones in a
row. All failing within days of warranty expiration.
Click to expand...

Obviously the secret internal countdown timer was running a bit fast ;)
 
All I know is that I refused to ever buy another Micropolis after that, and
shortly thereafter they went belly up... Maybe you and I were the only
customers???
 
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

And the post is through Google. Somebody has been trying to flood the
news group photo.digital with off topic posts.
 
Odie <odie_ferrous@atho said:
I am getting in a high proportion of Maxtor drives in for repair. But
this might just be the fact that they are so popular and common, rather
than any inherent problems.
Click to expand...

Do they tend to develop bad sectors but keep working, or do they fail
outright?
 
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I've had nothing but trouble with Maxtors. Western Digitals
have been mostly fine.
 
Lisa Horton said:
Haven't seen one go longer than 18 months roughly. They are noisy too.

What is the operating temp range for a hard drive? Is 26-32 C within spec?
Click to expand...

Are you saying that you've owned a statistically significant number of
Maxtors and have seen a large failure rate? Or are you saying that you've
read or heard that the rate is high? If the latter, you need to remember
that in cases like this you normally hear only one side of the story --
people who have had no failure and are happy aren't likely to be posting or
talking about the fact. But if someone has even one failure then watever
failed is instantly and frequently complained about. I personally have used
various Maxtors with no problems and my most recent build used a Maxtor
160gB SATA drive and it is quiet and cool. But I could honestly compain
about the 100% failure rate of Toshiba laptop drives that I've owned
(meaning that one drive failed after a few months and really pissed me off).
 
Back
Top