warning!!!! maxtor 120GB 160GB drives - unreliable

[hodw]

I advise all of you with maxtor 120GB or 160GB drives to immediatly
backup your data and buy new drives from other companies.

In the last 9 months I had two new maxtor drives fail without warning.
The same system has drives from other companies which work pefectly.
The money and data loss was much more that buying a new drive.

Also their RMA system and costumer support are really bad.

Hod

 

[Arno Wagner]

I advise all of you with maxtor 120GB or 160GB drives to immediatly
backup your data and buy new drives from other companies.

In the last 9 months I had two new maxtor drives fail without warning.
The same system has drives from other companies which work pefectly.
The money and data loss was much more that buying a new drive.

I have 22 Maxtor 120GB drives running with zero failures for 3 years
now. Maybe inadequate cooling or some other problem not the drive's
fault?

Arno

 

[Egil Solberg]

I advise all of you with maxtor 120GB or 160GB drives to immediatly
backup your data and buy new drives from other companies.

In the last 9 months I had two new maxtor drives fail without warning.
The same system has drives from other companies which work pefectly.
The money and data loss was much more that buying a new drive.

Also their RMA system and costumer support are really bad.

Hod

Hm, I' m on my 5th Maxtor drive now. Not a single one has ever failed on me.
Went over to Samsung, now that Seagate has bought Maxtor.

I hope you learned to make regular backups, after all. I learned it the hard
way with a Seagate drive once.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

I advise all of you with maxtor 120GB or 160GB drives to immediatly
backup your data and buy new drives from other companies.

News just in: bear defecates in woods and Pope confirms he's Catholic...

 

[hodw]

The same system has two WD drives which work perfectly

I am talking about 2 new drives not one out of a million



Hod

 

[hodw]

Yes I learned not to buy another MAXTOR even if my life depended on it.
Now that I think aout it ... if my life depended on it is am already
lost.

Hod

 

[Odie]

I advise all of you with maxtor 120GB or 160GB drives to immediatly
backup your data and buy new drives from other companies.

In the last 9 months I had two new maxtor drives fail without warning.
The same system has drives from other companies which work pefectly.
The money and data loss was much more that buying a new drive.

Also their RMA system and costumer support are really bad.

Hod

I'm not necessarily of the opinion that a Maxtor drive is necessarily
*that* much more badly manufactured than, say, Western Digital or some
others. However, they *do* have a high propensity to overheat, and
appear to be far more susceptible to failure caused by overheating.

Much as I dislike the drives myself (albeit they are good for business)
I do actually use some on a regular basis within the organisation
(mainly to keep as spares for recoveries) but they are efficiently
cooled and never run more than about 3deg C above ambient temperatures.



Odie

 

[Arno Wagner]

The same system has two WD drives which work perfectly

I am talking about 2 new drives not one out of a million

Just saying that your conclusion is suspect. Its elementary
statistics, plus the fact that mistreated Maxtor disks die fast,
while well treated ones are pretty reliable.

Arno

 

[CWatters]

The same system has two WD drives which work perfectly

My system has had two WD drives fail in it.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I'm not necessarily of the opinion that a Maxtor drive is necessarily
*that* much more badly manufactured than, say, Western Digital or some
others. However, they *do* have a high propensity to overheat, and
appear to be far more susceptible to failure caused by overheating.

Much as I dislike the drives myself (albeit they are good for business)
I do actually use some on a regular basis within the organisation

(mainly to keep as spares for recoveries)

Ah right, you run them on a daily basis so you can keep tabs on them
so that when you need them you know they will actually be working.

 

[timeOday]

Just saying that your conclusion is suspect. Its elementary
statistics, plus the fact that mistreated Maxtor disks die fast,
while well treated ones are pretty reliable.

Arno

Or his are from a bad batch, or he's just very unlucky, who knows?
Nobody's NDD reliability claims are reliable. Just give me a good warranty.

 

[hodw]

Thats interesting. Why did you have to replace you drives five times I
have WD drive 5 years old still working

Hod

 

[Rod Speed]

Thats interesting. Why did you have to replace you drives five times

He presumably means he has 5 drives in total, not that he replaced any of them.

 

[Egil Solberg]

Thats interesting. Why did you have to replace you drives five times I
have WD drive 5 years old still working

As Rod said, all drives are working perfectly. The oldest is a 13,6GB drive
from january 2000. Then a 60GB D740X from 2001 or 2002 , 2 DM9ers (120GB
from 2003 and a SATA 200GB from 2004) and a DM10 200GB from 2005.
As the drives get older, I retire them as backup devices not regularly used.
This to extend useful life. A backup disk not running 24/7 still serves the
backup purpose 24/7. The 13,6 and 120GB have both served long lives as
system disks. Now the DM10 has that role.

 

[Joe S]

Hm, I' m on my 5th Maxtor drive now. Not a single one has ever
failed on me. Went over to Samsung, now that Seagate has bought
Maxtor.

I hope you learned to make regular backups, after all. I learned it
the hard way with a Seagate drive once.

Got to say that my Maxtor Plus 9 works beautifully: quiet, fast,
cool, reliable. As user-friendly as my Samsung hard drive.

Everything about the Maxtor seems contrary to what is said here about
them.

The warnings here suggest I'm a very lucky bastard and I probably
wont buy Maxtor again.

 

[CJT]

Got to say that my Maxtor Plus 9 works beautifully: quiet, fast,
cool, reliable. As user-friendly as my Samsung hard drive.

Everything about the Maxtor seems contrary to what is said here about
them.

The warnings here suggest I'm a very lucky bastard and I probably
wont buy Maxtor again.

I've got a bunch of Maxtor drives and no problems with them.

I'd take what you read here with a grain of salt; there's plenty of
incompetence and bias among "contributors." People abuse drives and
then complain when they fail, accusing the manufacturers of defects.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I've got a bunch of Maxtor drives and no problems with them.

I'd take what you read here with a grain of salt; there's plenty of
incompetence and bias among "contributors." People abuse drives and
then complain when they fail, accusing the manufacturers of defects.

Exactly. And at least older Maxtors are unreliable when not cooled
well. By now I think that bad cooling is one of the most important
problems with computers today, especually with everything that
is high-performance in any way.

Arno

 

[Fabien LE LEZ]

Subject: warning!!!! maxtor 120GB 160GB drives - unreliable

Here's what happened to me:

In 2003, 2004 and in March 2005, I bought several Maxtor (PATA) hard
drives (2x 120 GB, 2x 200 GB, 1x 250 GB), and they all still work
fine.

Then, in summer 2005, I bought another Maxtor 250 GB. After a few
weeks, I noticed that several files were unreadable. I backuped the
other files, checked the disk with the Maxtor tool, got an error code,
then a RMA number, and I sent it to Maxtor.
I received another disk. I tried to format it, but got an error. Got
an error code, an RMA number, sent it back to Maxtor.
I received another disk. Same thing.
I received another disk, and I got rid of it. Spent too much time
already.

I've bought a WD instead, and it works fine. As does the "old" Maxtor
250.