Is Maxtor really that bad?

[Greenman]

So I was walking through Fry's and this 300gig 16meg cache Maxtor just jumped into my hands, it was only $99, so I took it home, pluged it in, and all was right with the world. Then I remembered all the threads about dead maxtors and started looking around, there are a boat load of people with dead Maxtor drives. Are they really all that bad? Did I just toss a hundred bucks down the hole? Do I own yet another door stop?

 

[slpaulson]

I haven't had any flat out die, but I had a couple get loud over time. I don't think they are that bad.

 

[mindwreck]

all drives can die. my maxtor has been working for years and it was a rma from maxtor.

 

[eLiu]

My father and I have had *terrible* experiences with the DiamondMax 9 series. I think we went through 3 or 4 drives before the warranties expired. I have a dead one as a paperweight now.

On the other hand, my mom's machine is running maxtor's first "fluid bearing" drive (5ish years ago?), and I have a linux box with a friend's 10GB maxtor drive that's been running constantly since 10GB was a big deal.

 

[Stangs55]

In ALL seriousness....I would not put ANY maxtor in my computer even if I got any one I wanted for free.

They are total junk...and yes, I speak from experience.

Maxtor Drives owned: 3
Maxtor Drives Failed within 1.5 yearw: 3

 

[Einy0]

I used to love Maxtor drives, USED to that is. There was a time when they where made very well. I have 2 7200Rpm 27.2GB drives that still work flawlessly. Slow as hell by today's standards... However, when they entered in to the 40GB terratory the crap hit the fan. I've RMAed a few for myself and others. A friend had a DOA. Total crap, had one die out 2 weeks after the 3yr mark. The 60 and 80 gb parts went the same way. Then they went to the 1yr warranty crap and I refuse to buy anything from them again. I did however get a free 120GB SATA drive almost 2yrs ago I think and I'm still using it today 0 probelms. It seems that HD manufacturers go in spurts of good and bad. There was a time when I was replacing dead WD hds on a weekly basis as well... The only company I have never seen a drive fail from is Seagate. So since they have the super 5yr warranty now, I'm all about Seagate. Sure they aren't the fastest but if you want reliablilty they seem to be the way to go.

 

[cretinbob]

Maxtor is OK. They used to be OEM choice products, and were slow slow slow. Not so much anymore. As log as yours works it's fine.

 

[Painman]

I've never owned a Maxtor, can't see any reason to get one when there's Seagate :thumbsup:

 

[stevty2889]

Every Quantom and Maxtor drive I had died in less than 2 years, so I wouldn't buy one again from my own experience. But Maxtor was bought out by Seagate anyway.

 

[powerMarkymark]

I have a dozen or so Maxtor drives and over the years only one died.



M@rc


I Am Canadian!

 

[Mem]

Never had any problems personally with Maxtor HDs.

I thought Seagate now own Maxtor?

 

[Kyanzes]

I never ever had any problems with Maxtor drives. I had like seven or eight of them in the last five years, bought them at different locations, and many of them were of different models. I never had to replace any of them due to functional issues, the only reason I replaced the ones I owned is because I wanted more available storage space. I also use the comp every day, mostly 8+ hours. It's true though that my emule comp had issues and data corruptions happened but it turned out to be an overheating problem that got resolved. No problems since then.

 

[dguy6789]

All companies produce some faulty drives. You only hear about the ones that fail. No one comes on a forum and makes a thread saying "Hey look at me, my hard drive is working." They are likely to make a thread on their new rig or video card or overclock.


I have owned around 25 hard drives in my time. 9 of them were Maxtor and none have failed. My main rig is using a Maxtor and it runs great.

 

[sandorski]

Really that bad? Worse.

My second dead Maxtor is unplugged in my case right now. Just waiting to get motivated to RMA it. Not really looking forward to the replacement that much, I wouldn't want to put anything important on it.

 

[Tostada]

I don't think Maxtor's that bad. The reason I stopped buying their drives (the same reason I won't buy Hitachi drives) is that they give you such a hard time over RMAs.

Me (after waiting on hold an hour): "Yeah, I need to RMA a drive."
Indian tech: "Did you run our diagnostic program?"
Me: "The drive is just does nothing but tick when I power it on."
Indian tech: "You need to download our diagnostic program and it will give you an error code."
Me: "What's the error code for 'Drive is totally broken'?"
Indian tech: "You need to run the diagnostic program and get the code. I cannot give you an RMA without the code."

 

[Tostada]

It's actually kinda funny... Maxtor used to specifically tell you, "We have a no-hassle return policy. We'll give an RMA to anyone who requests one." I got tons of their drives and had maybe two die total after heavy use for over a year. Oddly enough, the same time they switched to 1-year warranties, they switched to a "We don't want to replace your defective drive" policy.

 

[Tostada]

Also, I think Maxtor & Hitachi have both stopped cross-shipping RMAs.

Old policy:
"You want an RMA? We'll ship that out today. Just get us back the old one in 30 days or you'll be charged for the replacement."

New policy:
"You want an RMA? Run our diagnostic software (which will format your drive and mark out all bad sectors so you will NOT get an RMA if your drive works at all), then give us the diagnostic code, then send us the defective drive. If you don't package the defective drive properly, we will deny your RMA. When we get the drive, if we want to give you a replacement, we will send it out in about 14 days from the time we receive the defective one."

 

[kb3edk]

A good friend of mine works at Maxtor (Seagate is keeping his plant going, for now) and says "if you knew the type of stuff that ships out of here as brand new, you'd be amazed!" In other words practically every drive that they make has some sort of minute imperfection or another. He works as a firmware programmer for them and all he does is write error-correction code to compensate for microscopic flaws in the platter surface. From what he knows of the competition, everyone else in the industry does the exact same thing.

From my own experience I've bought three of the DiamondMax 9 hard drives over the past year and so far I have had one fail on me. Although to be honest, I "abused" that one a fair deal, moving it from computer to computer, and popping it in an external enclosure for several months and taking it on the road with me. I've had just as many problems with Seagate and WD drives over the years.

 

[CrashX]

I have had more Maxtor drives die on me than all other brands combined, and I have built a TON of systems.
A couple years ago I bought four 160GB Maxtors for a storage server because they were the biggest out at the time. I had three out of the four drives that were either DOA, or died within a week.
I have a customer with about 200 identical Dell desktops. They all came with Maxtors and in the two years they have owned these machines, we have RMAed of 75% of the HD's because of spontaneous dying. And what do you know?! Dell has been sending us WD's in their place. Dell even knows not to reship the same Maxtors.

I have sworn off Maxtor forever. That is just too many bad drives from one company. I have hundreds of Seagates, Samsungs, and WDs that have been in machines I built for customers, with maybe a 10% failure at most.

 

[TD77077]

I have built many machines and have seen plenty of hard drive failures. Almost every Fujitsu drive I've seen has failed. In my office we were 0-4 with IBM "Deathstars", only one lasting over 1 year. I saw several WD drives fail when they were having troubles with their first 7200 drives. I think I've only seen one Maxtor drive fail, but I haven;t used any of their drives over 80G. I don't recall ever seeing a Seagate fail, but I've seen messages about problems with their larger drives recently.

So, I generally choose Seagate first. I think Maxtor and WD reliability are about the same. I've stayed away from Hitachi since they bought IBM's drive business. And I haven't tried Samsung.

Take your pick! It is really a crapshoot.

 

[LazyB]

I work in a computer store as a technician for 2 years ...still work part time now

I can tell you that Maxtor drive has more RMA than WD and Seagate

Maxtor is a good seller because they always come out first with the new bell and whistle: SATA-2 , 16 Mb of Cache etc and they're cheaper too. Even it's just a $2-$5, people always want cheaper.

WD is ok, the RMA rate is within the normal range

Seagate is the clear winner. I hardly remember the last time we got a Seagate RMAed

I have 2 Seagate 7200.7 in my personal computer and the next HD will be a Seagate too for sure...Unless I go with Raptor but I don't wanna spend that kind of money

 

[Greenman]

Hrm, seems I should have done a little home work first, reading the box would have been a good place to start. Guess I'll just keep games on it and see what happens.

Thanks for all the info.

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: Tostada
Also, I think Maxtor & Hitachi have both stopped cross-shipping RMAs.

Old policy:
"You want an RMA? We'll ship that out today. Just get us back the old one in 30 days or you'll be charged for the replacement."

New policy:
"You want an RMA? Run our diagnostic software (which will format your drive and mark out all bad sectors so you will NOT get an RMA if your drive works at all), then give us the diagnostic code, then send us the defective drive. If you don't package the defective drive properly, we will deny your RMA. When we get the drive, if we want to give you a replacement, we will send it out in about 14 days from the time we receive the defective one."

That is very interesting. I had just done a Advance RMA with Maxtor online, and of coz it was no questions asked because it automatically generated me a RMA number. I got the drive a week later, and I sent back the drive after I made sure the replacement work. I didn't even buy that drive in the US but I got a replacement from Maxtor in US.

 

[jpk]

I've owned many Maxtors and never had a problem with any of them.

 

[LED]

Originally posted by: Greenman
So I was walking through Fry's and this 300gig 16meg cache Maxtor just jumped into my hands, it was only $99, so I took it home, pluged it in, and all was right with the world. Then I remembered all the threads about dead maxtors and started looking around, there are a boat load of people with dead Maxtor drives. Are they really all that bad? Did I just toss a hundred bucks down the hole? Do I own yet another door stop?

I have yet to see one Hardware Manufacture that has yet to be criticized

All the HD Co...got it when they reduced their warranty down to 1 year which didn't last long ....Consumer pressure on that one

Is Maxtor really that bad?

No...Maxtor was once considered leader of the pack by many and was on top with OEM builds in the 90's...to have outlasted the likes of Quantum who they bought out and others who went down they can't be all that bad and you have a warranty plus 16MB cache for $99 ...I tip my hat off to yea cause I just blew $69.99 on 1 Maxtor HD...They aren't my favorite and I was personally upset when they took over Quantum...but now Seagate owns em