RE: Maxtor hard drives fail too soon.You're lucky. I lost two Maxtors (a 13GB and a 20GB) in less than a year. By comparison, I still have a 2.5GB Conner running since 1997 or so.
Gee, my 4 year old Maxtor(16GB)is still running and during the same time I have replaced 2 Western Digital(10GB)drives.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Corliss [mailto:
[email protected]]
Posted At: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 8:59 AM
Posted To: alt.comp.hardware
Conversation: Maxtor hard drives fail too soon.
Subject: Maxtor hard drives fail too soon.
Most people depend greatly on their hard drive(s) to be (a) reliable and safe media for storing those files. Well, if you have a Maxtor hard drive and tend to not back up your stuff, you might want to think about doing so on either CD, DVD or on a backup hard drive made by another manufacturer. Here is why:
I'd grown very concerned when Bill O'Brien (of Computer Shopper's "Hard Edge" fame) at:
http://www.realtechnews.com/
had spoken out against Maxtor, citing the multiple failures he'd experienced with drives from that manufacturer. Not only that, but readers of Bill's blog have flooded him with tales of similar woe.
Seems that my concern was very warranted since after less than two years of usage, my Maxtor Diamondmax Plus ATA 100/60 GB hard drive has totally failed. Initially the drive started making a clacking noise at startup and when accessing data. Then the hard drive light remained on, the master file table got corrupted and finally the drive crapped out entirely - dead as a doornail.
Luckily I lost no data since, besides backing up to CDR, I always run two hard drives and use the slave as a backup clone of the master. I'd just updated the clone too. The bad news is that the hard drive I'm totally relying on at this point is an IBM Deskstar ATA/100 60 GB, which it seems from a lot that I've read, is similarly unreliable. Not only that, but it's at the end of the apparent lifespan attributed to it by several of the negative reviews it's received.
During a phone conversation with my computer company's head of technical support (both company and person will remain unnamed), he told me his observations had led to the conclusion that Maxtor hard drives are
*very* unreliable and that Seagate drives are the way to go. He also warned me that his experience has shown that the IBM Deskstar which came with my computer will be about as reliable as my Maxtor turned out to be.
Note that I don't hold my computer company responsible for this problem since hard drive life spans only become apparent after several years have passed since a particular model's introduction. Not only that, but the person referred to above was right out front about all this.
And yeah, I could send the Maxtor back to the company and get a "free"
replacement but because the drive still holds personal data that can be recovered, that's not going to happen. It's probably a safe assumption that Maxtor is very aware such concerns by its customers and depends on this to alleviate their responsibility.
Not only that, but the three year warranty that I obtained with the drive no longer exists on their new drives which only come with a meager one year warranty. So basically, what Maxtor seems to be saying is that you should expect your hard drive to fail after only a year of use and that you should be expected to replace it at least that often. What total bullshit and Maxtor will go the way of the dodo, I'm sure.
I have a Seagate on order and am hoping that the IBM "Deathstar" will hold out until it arrives. In the mean time though, I'm religiously backing up to CD.
Hey, believe what you want though.... it's your data. Still, you've been warned.
