so what is the deal with maxtor's bad reputation ???

[Lorenzo Sandini]

I have had many different HDDs in my computers for the last 10 years,
and never suffered any hdd death or loss of data. Maybe I was just lucky.

I haven't been too worried about being at the bleeding edge of access
times and sustained transfer speeds, and I have tried P-ATA RAID0 with
various combinations of drives. I think I have owned maxtors, seagates,
western digitals, IBM, and many other brands, without noticing any
substantial performance difference, in a common office computer computer
setting, in which one machine has slowly become a gaming machine, a
video editing platform, a web and ftp server, etc...

I recently bought a new mobo with nforce4 chipset, and a SATA-2 HDD to
go with it. Again, not driven by a need for absolute need for silence or
performance, I trusted my dealer and bough a Western Digital Caviar (8MB
cache, 250GB). The drive's idle spinning noise was so much louder that I
brought it back and chose something else. The dealer almost laughed at
me when I picked the Maxtor Maxline III, much louder, hotter, slower and
not reliable.

1) access is louder, and idle noise is almost inaudible, as silent as my
other Maxtor 300 GB DiamondMax10 SATA1

2) hotter ? running behind a 12cm fan in a Coolermaster Stacker, I don't
see much difference.

3) Probably in real life I won't see a difference, but in HDTach (FWIW),
I get lower access times, higher burst and sustained read speed in the
maxtor.

4)less reliable ????? Based on statistics ? Items returned by customers
? "No, by reputation" he said. And indeed many people in the internet
seem to think like this.

I have this maxline III now and I am really pleased with it. The machine
is watercooled, with only one fan on the front (12cm, 5V) and a similar
fan on the back. I can barely hear it when I listen to music or work,
and when I play then the loudspeakers well cover the noise. I can only
recommend this drive, but I am ready to hear comments from other users.

Lorenzo

 

[Rod Speed]

It's true, and basically sent them broke.

I have had many different HDDs in my computers for the last 10 years,
and never suffered any hdd death or loss of data. Maybe I was just lucky.

Nope, quite a few get that result.

I haven't been too worried about being at the bleeding edge of access
times and sustained transfer speeds, and I have tried P-ATA RAID0 with
various combinations of drives. I think I have owned maxtors, seagates,
western digitals, IBM, and many other brands, without noticing any
substantial performance difference, in a common office computer computer
setting,

Yeah, that's the modern reality. The main
difference now is how noisy the drive is.

And some need decent cooling.

in which one machine has slowly become a gaming machine, a video editing
platform, a web and ftp server, etc...

I recently bought a new mobo with nforce4 chipset, and a SATA-2 HDD to go
with it. Again, not driven by a need for absolute need for silence or
performance, I trusted my dealer and bough a Western Digital Caviar (8MB
cache, 250GB). The drive's idle spinning noise was so much louder that I
brought it back and chose something else. The dealer almost laughed at me
when I picked the Maxtor Maxline III, much louder, hotter, slower and not
reliable.

He's right.

1) access is louder, and idle noise is almost inaudible, as silent as my
other Maxtor 300 GB DiamondMax10 SATA1

2) hotter ? running behind a 12cm fan in a Coolermaster Stacker, I don't
see much difference.

Sure, but run it without that sort of cooling, you will.

3) Probably in real life I won't see a difference, but in HDTach (FWIW),
I get lower access times, higher burst and sustained read speed in the
maxtor.

And you wouldnt be able to pick the performance in a proper
double blind trial without being allowed to use a benchmark.

4)less reliable ????? Based on statistics ?

Yep, have a look at storagereview.

Items returned by customers ? "No, by reputation" he said. And indeed
many people in the internet seem to think like this.

That is for a reason. Maxtor went bust because of that problem.

I have this maxline III now and I am really pleased with it. The machine
is watercooled, with only one fan on the front (12cm, 5V) and a similar
fan on the back.

That is the best way to run maxtors, with decent cooling.

I can barely hear it when I listen to music or work,

I dont want to hear a drive at all, and dont have case fans either.
And deliberately use very quiet power supplys and cpu fans too.

and when I play then the loudspeakers well cover the noise. I can only
recommend this drive,

You dont have any basis for that on the reliability.

Thats what most care about, boot drive failure is a
pain in the arse even if its fully backed up at all times.

but I am ready to hear comments from other users.

Tad radical.

 

[Lorenzo Sandini]

You dont have any basis for that on the reliability.

Thats what most care about, boot drive failure is a

Well after your comments I withdraw my recommendation. However I won't
rush out to swap the drive again.

So Rod, any suggestion for a future 250-300 GB SATA-2 drive ?

Lorenzo

 

[Rod Speed]

Well after your comments I withdraw my recommendation. However I won't
rush out to swap the drive again.

So Rod, any suggestion for a future 250-300 GB SATA-2 drive ?

I prefer Samsungs myself, mainly because they are much
quieter and decently reliable and dont need agressive cooling.

Main downside with them is that they arent as common with
operations selling hard drives and they are a bit later to
market with the biggest drives, currently 300G is the max.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

I have had many different HDDs in my computers for the last 10 years,
and never suffered any hdd death or loss of data. Maybe I was just lucky.

<snip>

I had yet another set-to with Maxtor (Europe) today.

I managed to persuade them to collect some RMA drives as I had such a
high turnover or Maxtor failures and my clients didn't feel it was fair
to have to pay exhorbitant postage costs to Maxtor because their
products were at fault. They did agree, as they have always done in the
past, but an interesting line in the person's response to my phone call
(received by email

"The failure rate on our products is very low, but we do accept that it
will happen in some cases."

Like bloody hell "is very low."

I still have the feeling they had to sell out due to some legal action
against them for the quality of their products.

I can't find any concrete evidence of this, though.


Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

<snip>

I had yet another set-to with Maxtor (Europe) today.

I managed to persuade them to collect some RMA drives as I had such a
high turnover or Maxtor failures and my clients didn't feel it was
fair to have to pay exhorbitant postage costs to Maxtor because their
products were at fault. They did agree, as they have always done in
the past, but an interesting line in the person's response to my
phone call (received by email

"The failure rate on our products is very low, but we do accept that
it will happen in some cases."

Like bloody hell "is very low."

I still have the feeling they had to sell out due to some legal action
against them for the quality of their products.

I can't find any concrete evidence of this, though.

They'd been losing money for years now. It really is that basic.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

They'd been losing money for years now. It really is that basic.

What really pisses me off, though, is the fact that every time I have
spoken to Maxtor in the past couple of years about their high rates of
failures - especially with their OneTouch drives, they adamantly
maintain their products are the best on the market.

Surely even the most loyal employee would hint at there being a
problem???

F*ck knows what Seagate are going to do about all the problems...


Odie

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

What really pisses me off, though, is the fact that every time I have
spoken to Maxtor in the past couple of years about their high rates of
failures - especially with their OneTouch drives, they adamantly
maintain their products are the best on the market.

Surely even the most loyal employee would hint at there being a
problem???

Let's do a quick test, shall we:

You are the worst data recovery company in the whole of britain.
Are you going to admit that?

 

[J. Clarke]

What really pisses me off, though, is the fact that every time I have
spoken to Maxtor in the past couple of years about their high rates of
failures - especially with their OneTouch drives, they adamantly
maintain their products are the best on the market.

Surely even the most loyal employee would hint at there being a
problem???

Not if he wants to keep his job. Admitting that there is a problem opens
the door to lawsuits, and goes way beyond Joe Peon's authority.

F*ck knows what Seagate are going to do about all the problems...

Probably stop answering the phone when you call.

Have you ever tried to find out _why_ you're seeing all these dead Maxtors
instead of just deciding that it's because Maxtor drives are crap? If I
had a client who was sending me dozens or hundreds of bad drives I'd at
least _offer_ to try to find out what is killing them.

 

[Neill Massello]

4)less reliable ????? Based on statistics ? Items returned by customers
? "No, by reputation" he said. And indeed many people in the internet
seem to think like this.

We "think like this" because comprehensive, unbiased statistics
regarding hard drive failure rates aren't available. The best data is in
the hands of drive manufacturers, and they don't talk. Box makers and
other OEM resellers, who have the next best statistics, generally don't
talk either; but they do send signals with their choice of drives for
their products. Failure data collected by large institutional users also
gets out and gets incorporated into reputation.

BTW, a large part of anybody's store of information comes "by
reputation".

 

[Rod Speed]

What really pisses me off, though, is the fact that every time I have
spoken to Maxtor in the past couple of years about their high rates of
failures - especially with their OneTouch drives, they adamantly
maintain their products are the best on the market.

Yeah, tho that isnt unusual, you hardly ever see anyone admit that
their drives do worse than their competition does reliability wise.

Surely even the most loyal employee would hint at there being a
problem???

They likely actually believe what they say.

There is no easy way for manufacturer's monkeys
to see what their competition sees failure rate wise.

F*ck knows what Seagate are going to do about all the problems...

Yeah, hopefully they plan to pull the plug on the duds and just
bought maxtor to close them down to kill off the competition.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have had many different HDDs in my computers for the last 10 years,
and never suffered any hdd death or loss of data. Maybe I was just lucky.
[...]
1) access is louder, and idle noise is almost inaudible, as silent as my
other Maxtor 300 GB DiamondMax10 SATA1

2) hotter ? running behind a 12cm fan in a Coolermaster Stacker, I don't
see much difference.

3) Probably in real life I won't see a difference, but in HDTach (FWIW),
I get lower access times, higher burst and sustained read speed in the
maxtor.

4)less reliable ????? Based on statistics ? Items returned by customers
? "No, by reputation" he said. And indeed many people in the internet
seem to think like this.

I have this maxline III now and I am really pleased with it. The machine
is watercooled, with only one fan on the front (12cm, 5V) and a similar
fan on the back. I can barely hear it when I listen to music or work,
and when I play then the loudspeakers well cover the noise. I can only
recommend this drive, but I am ready to hear comments from other users.

My experience is that they get very warm when not cooled well and die
early. If cooled well, I have had no issue (I have about 40 running at
the moment). The single MaxLine II drive I have stays significantly
cooler and may not have this issue to the same degree. But I just
recenlty had a 200GB Maxtor drive (DiamondMax Plus 9) overheat under
light load in an external enclosure to the point of non-functionality.
Seagate and Samsung drives stay operationsl and withing the allowed
temperature range in the same enclosure even with heavy load (< 55C
measured with an IR thermometer).

My guess as to the unreliablitity is that many people do not
cool their drives well and kill them that way. In the sense
Maxtor is correct that their drives are not unreliable. However
their design is not suitable for normal PC usage (and users!).
They should have a large warning on them to the effect that
"Needs significnat cooling airflow for reliable operation!" or
the like. It also seems that some of their external drive
enclosures are inadequately cooled and kill drives.

Arno

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Let's do a quick test, shall we:

You are the worst data recovery company in the whole of britain.
Are you going to admit that?

Bad day, Folkert?

You've spent ages trawling through recent threads nit picking.

Perhaps when you hit puberty things will improve for you. I do hope so
- you must be going through hell.


Odie

 

[Mark M]

Bad day, Folkert?

You've spent ages trawling through recent threads nit picking.

Perhaps when you hit puberty things will improve for you. I do
hope so - you must be going through hell.

Odie,

Folkie is just like that. Every day seems like a bad day.

I think that deep down Folkie is probably a good guy who actually
knows his technical stuff but here he does like to make people
think harder about their own questions.

The trouble is that many people don't usually see that sort of
challenge as helpful and Folkie can also be a bit abrupt.

Oh well.

 

[Mark M]

My experience is that they get very warm when not cooled well
and die early. If cooled well, I have had no issue (I have about
40 running at the moment). The single MaxLine II drive I have
stays significantly cooler and may not have this issue to the
same degree. But I just recenlty had a 200GB Maxtor drive
(DiamondMax Plus 9) overheat under light load in an external
enclosure to the point of non-functionality. Seagate and Samsung
drives stay operationsl and withing the allowed temperature
range in the same enclosure even with heavy load (< 55C measured
with an IR thermometer).

Arno, as I'm sure you know Maxlines are designed for different usage
patterns than the DiamondMaxs so maybe users are using one instead of
the other?

My experience of a DiamondMax Plus 9 is that they are every bit a
match for Samsungs and I happen to very much share Rod's preference
for Samsung drives.

Quite unexpectedly, my own Plus 9 runs smoothly, quietly and cool.
It's a bit faster than the equivalent Samsungs I have (both 160 GB)
and it has never had a glitch. The air space it has for cooling is
laughably small (the only way I can fit it) but it runs at low use at
30 C in room temperature while two 160 GB Samsung's in different
parts of the case are 25 C and 33 C with no accesses at all.

Of course drives evolve through their marketing lives and ISTR that
the Plus 9s changed more than ususal. For example the platter sizes
in the Plus 9's changed a couple of times: announced with 80GB
platters it in actual fact went to market with 60GB and 60GB platters
(some problem there then) and later had 80 GB. See:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200302/200302276Y200x0_1.html

My guess as to the unreliablitity is that many people do not
cool their drives well and kill them that way. In the sense
Maxtor is correct that their drives are not unreliable. However
their design is not suitable for normal PC usage (and users!).
They should have a large warning on them to the effect that
"Needs significnat cooling airflow for reliable operation!" or
the like. It also seems that some of their external drive
enclosures are inadequately cooled and kill drives.

Now where did I see that lovely little table showing drive reliabilty
(for all models) comparing manufacturers and drawing on some
reasonable data. Was it at StorageReview? It wasn't this table but
anyway this is interesting in its own way:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/computer/data-backup.htm

 

[Arno Wagner]

On 15 Feb 2006, Arno Wagner wrote:

Arno, as I'm sure you know Maxlines are designed for different usage
patterns than the DiamondMaxs so maybe users are using one instead of
the other?

Most people use the standard drives, because that is what most
vendors offer. I only have this one MaxLine II, because I was not
looking too closely when I orderd it.

My experience of a DiamondMax Plus 9 is that they are every bit a
match for Samsungs and I happen to very much share Rod's preference
for Samsung drives.

Quite unexpectedly, my own Plus 9 runs smoothly, quietly and cool.
It's a bit faster than the equivalent Samsungs I have (both 160 GB)
and it has never had a glitch. The air space it has for cooling is
laughably small (the only way I can fit it) but it runs at low use at
30 C in room temperature while two 160 GB Samsung's in different
parts of the case are 25 C and 33 C with no accesses at all.

Of course drives evolve through their marketing lives and ISTR that
the Plus 9s changed more than ususal. For example the platter sizes
in the Plus 9's changed a couple of times: announced with 80GB
platters it in actual fact went to market with 60GB and 60GB platters
(some problem there then) and later had 80 GB. See:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200302/200302276Y200x0_1.html

I agree that these drives likely have changed, if only because the
situation was very costly for Maxtor with all the warranty returns.
My DiamondMax 9 plus are all from 2003, and they definitely do not
compare to Samsung. They are relatively loud and produce a lot of
heat. As I said, still reliable with good cooling, i.e. fan directly
before or under the disk. I have about 30 from 2003, about 20 from
2004, they all run 24/7 and so far I had one failure that I could not
trace down to mishandling in transport. But they all run in an
air-conditioned room with 20C air temperature and all have fans
that take in air from the front and blow it directly over the
disks.

Now where did I see that lovely little table showing drive reliabilty
(for all models) comparing manufacturers and drawing on some
reasonable data. Was it at StorageReview? It wasn't this table but
anyway this is interesting in its own way:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/computer/data-backup.htm

Does not surpris me. Many people try to convince themselves that
their own choices are good ones. Often they even continue to do
so when evidence to the contrary comes to their attention.

Arno

 

[J. Clarke]

Most people use the standard drives, because that is what most
vendors offer. I only have this one MaxLine II, because I was not
looking too closely when I orderd it.





I agree that these drives likely have changed, if only because the
situation was very costly for Maxtor with all the warranty returns.
My DiamondMax 9 plus are all from 2003, and they definitely do not
compare to Samsung. They are relatively loud and produce a lot of
heat. As I said, still reliable with good cooling, i.e. fan directly
before or under the disk. I have about 30 from 2003, about 20 from
2004, they all run 24/7 and so far I had one failure that I could not
trace down to mishandling in transport. But they all run in an
air-conditioned room with 20C air temperature and all have fans
that take in air from the front and blow it directly over the
disks.




Does not surpris me. Many people try to convince themselves that
their own choices are good ones. Often they even continue to do
so when evidence to the contrary comes to their attention.

I find it interesting that he lists LaCie as a drive manufacturer--LaCie
does not make drives, they buy Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, WD, Samsung, etc
drives and put them in boxes with a "Lacie" sticker on the front.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

On 15 Feb 2006, Arno Wagner wrote:
[snip]
Now where did I see that lovely little table showing drive reliabilty
(for all models) comparing manufacturers and drawing on some
reasonable data. Was it at StorageReview? It wasn't this table but
anyway this is interesting in its own way:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/computer/data-backup.htm

Does not surpris me. Many people try to convince themselves that
their own choices are good ones. Often they even continue to do
so when evidence to the contrary comes to their attention.

I find it interesting that he lists LaCie as a drive manufacturer--LaCie
does not make drives, they buy Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, WD, Samsung, etc
drives and put them in boxes with a "Lacie" sticker on the front.

So now you know how to make those Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor,
WD, Samsung drives more reliable. Just put the magic sticker on.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

On 15 Feb 2006, Arno Wagner wrote:
[snip]
Now where did I see that lovely little table showing drive reliabilty
(for all models) comparing manufacturers and drawing on some
reasonable data. Was it at StorageReview? It wasn't this table but
anyway this is interesting in its own way:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/computer/data-backup.htm

Does not surpris me. Many people try to convince themselves that
their own choices are good ones. Often they even continue to do
so when evidence to the contrary comes to their attention.

I find it interesting that he lists LaCie as a drive manufacturer--LaCie
does not make drives, they buy Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, WD, Samsung, etc
drives and put them in boxes with a "Lacie" sticker on the front.

So now you know how to make those Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor,
WD, Samsung drives more reliable. Just put the magic sticker on.

I would have thought you'd be aware that certain manufacturing / process
control / quality control issues would be part of the process of "making
a drive more reliable" - but then I could be wrong.

Or do you think drives are manufactured by the Lego principle?

Goodness me, Folkert - I thought you had as many as three brain cells.

Obviously the other two are out looking for the third one that's been
missing for months.


Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

Arno Wagner wrote:
On 15 Feb 2006, Arno Wagner wrote:
[snip]
Now where did I see that lovely little table showing drive
reliabilty (for all models) comparing manufacturers and drawing
on some reasonable data. Was it at StorageReview? It wasn't
this table but anyway this is interesting in its own way:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/computer/data-backup.htm

Does not surpris me. Many people try to convince themselves that
their own choices are good ones. Often they even continue to do
so when evidence to the contrary comes to their attention.

I find it interesting that he lists LaCie as a drive
manufacturer--LaCie does not make drives, they buy Seagate,
Hitachi, Maxtor, WD, Samsung, etc drives and put them in boxes with
a "Lacie" sticker on the front.

So now you know how to make those Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor,
WD, Samsung drives more reliable. Just put the magic sticker on.

I would have thought you'd be aware that certain manufacturing /
process control / quality control issues would be part of the process
of "making a drive more reliable" - but then I could be wrong.

I bet its much more about how its designed in the first place,
most obviously with how it gets rid of the heat thats produced etc.

Or do you think drives are manufactured by the Lego principle?

Nope, but I doubt that a properly designed drive should
be hard to manufacture at a very low failure rate now.