Raptor vs Maxtor 16MB...

[JBT]

Originally posted by: Haphazard
Another interesting comparison would be noise. Those who have or have had both the Maxtor DM 10 and the Raptor II, is the Raptor noisier by a large margin? Both in terms of idle whine and seek 'crunch'? The only thing hodling me back from going w/ a Raptor as my system drive is concern over the noise (I'm trying to build a quiet rig).

cheers.

My Raptor is pretty much silent when idle but boy she puts out some noise when reading/writing. I have no idea how noisey the Maxtors are though.

 

[morkys]

Well if the seagate isn't really a slow drive relative to others, and its warranty is 5 years and the drives have a good reputation, I'm going to go ahead with my seagate

 

[imported_2x]

I'm not sure why many have noisy raptors cause mine is pretty silent. Sound is subjective to an extent. My raptor is in an Antec case with rubber grommets in place where the screws fasten the drive to the case and I think this makes a huge difference in noise dampening. If you have a metal screw attached to the drive in a metal enclosing within the case, you will have noise with a drive that runs @ 10000rpms.

 

[CQuinn]

15 years of Maxtors, most I've owned are still workable.

2 (540MB) died thru user error.

3-4 smaller (245MB to 7GB) ones are sitting in shelves/boxes, waiting for me to come
up with an excuse to use them again.

1 (80Gig) has been in almost contant use for close to 4 years.
(its a carryover from the merger with Quantum).

1 (250G SATA) was RMA returned recenctly for SMART errors, but its replacement
shows no problems so far.

Another (250G 16M cache ATA) is too new to judge at this point, but has been working
well.

I also have 3 WD drives that have served me well over the years.

 

[ssvegeta1010]

Raptor, I wont even use more than ~60 GB.

 

[edmundoab]

I have personally not experienced any problems with Maxtor.

I had more of IBM deskstar headache.. now considered Hitachi i guess
changed 2 drives in 2 years
and I thought I was just unlucky... after loosing the first drive due to bad sectors.

WD raptor has been working good so far..
but not a fair comparison considering the time that I've been using it

 

[Ken90630]

And I demur. Maxtor is laudable.

I've owned 3 Western Digitals - ALL Died within 1 to 2 years.

I've also owned half a dozen Maxtors, some for many years. Not a single lost bit of data, and going strong.

So... there's little point in anyone's anecdotal evidence.

Get the real scoop from those who analyze HD reliability for a living.

[/quote]
I'm not a fanboy for any HD manufacturer, but reading these forums for a while now has convinced me that complaints about Maxtor drives outnumber complaints about ALL the other HD manufacturers' drives by at least 5 to 1 (if not more). I haven't counted them, of course, but that's my impression. You read constant complaints about Maxtor from too many people, and they can't all be stupid or incompetent users. Whether or not those people "analyze HD reliability for a living" is irrelevant. No offense, Glpster, but what is it that you do there at Maxtor?

There's actually quite a lot of "point in anyone's anecdotal evidence" when that evidence is consistent and presented over a long period of time by a lot of different people. You rarely see complaints about Seagate (except maybe from employees of Maxtor? ), so a reasonable conclusion would be that their drives are reliable and of high quality. Ditto, for the most part, Western Digital. The only other drive I can think of that has garnered more widespread contempt than Maxtor's drives is the infamous Hitachi/IBM "Deathstar."

I've only had one experience with a Maxtor drive, and that was a couple months ago. My friend had a machine he wanted to upgrade, so I replaced his two-year old Maxtor with a Seagate. The Maxtor was grinding like a skateboard wheel that just went thru a gravel pit. After only two years, that is unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. But, I will acknowledge that that's only one drive, so take that for what it's worth.

And no, I don't work for any HD manufacturer (nor am I in the computer industry at all).
No offense to anyone who likes Maxtor. Just throwing my .02.

 

[Megatomic]

The only time I've had a hard drive "die" on me was when I was overclocking the PCI bus (pre-lock days). My wife has a 4 year old Maxtor 40GB drive in her system, it's as old as the KT266A mobo in there with it.

I think stuff just lasts longer if it's treated right, provided it was built with decent quality.

 

[Ken90630]

One other thing we're all maybe guilty of overlooking is the fact that, like cars, every HD manufacturer has good & not-so-good models within their lines (duh). Obviously not every drive from any manufacturer is horrible or great. Plus, one thing about anecdotal evidence is that we have no way of knowing the conditions under which the user experienced what he experienced with the drive. Did the machine have proper cooling? Did the HD get jarred, dropped, or subjected to static during installation? Has the user bumped the computer with his knee a bunch of times while it was reading/writing data? Was there any other environmental abuse? As I said earlier, however, not ALL the people who complain about Maxtor are likely to have subjected the drives to abuse. In fact, most A-techers represent a higher level of computer savvy than the Average Joe, so it would be reasonable to assume just the opposite.

Whatever .... Assuming people are honest about their experiences, you can't argue with people who have a bunch of Maxtors and have had great luck with them, nor can you argue with those who've had a bunch of Maxtors and had horrible luck with them. There are just too many of the latter for me to even consider buying a Maxtor HD anytime soon, but to each his own.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'd take the raptor, I just don't trust Maxtor drives after all the horror stories I've heard about DM9/10 drives Maxtors older drives are pretty good I still have 2 D740X's in service altho they are realy quantam drives under the maxtor label. I've had good luck w/ Seagate, WD, and older Maxtors, my little bro has a 200gb 8meg buffer DM+ 8 that is still working well after more than a year. The only drives I've had die on me were a 540 meg WD after I just pulled all the data off it, a 1.2GB WD drive that I droped from a shelf about 4ft and was still able to get the data before it bought it and a 30GB 75GXP, eg one of the deathstars, it's replacment also failed. At this point any modern 8meg or better buffer 7200rpm drives are so close in performance I'd buy for warrenty and reliability over speed. If you want the highest speed ATA can give you get a raptor.

 

[Ken90630]

At this point any modern 8meg or better buffer 7200rpm drives are so close in performance I'd buy for warrenty and reliability over speed. If you want the highest speed ATA can give you get a raptor.

Well said.

 

[canadianpsycho]

I've got the 74 Raptor as boot/games/apps and a Seagate 7200.7 as storage for cmoics, ISOs, etc.

Seems like a nice combo. Didn't feel at all slower coming from 2x36 RAIDed Raptors.

I don't even need 200 + HDD space, I'm not much of a packrat.

 

[Glpster]

Originally posted by: Ken90630
And I demur. Maxtor is laudable.

I've owned 3 Western Digitals - ALL Died within 1 to 2 years.

I've also owned half a dozen Maxtors, some for many years. Not a single lost bit of data, and going strong.

So... there's little point in anyone's anecdotal evidence.

Get the real scoop from those who analyze HD reliability for a living.

I'm not a fanboy for any HD manufacturer, but reading these forums for a while now has convinced me that complaints about Maxtor drives outnumber complaints about ALL the other HD manufacturers' drives by at least 5 to 1 (if not more). I haven't counted them, of course, but that's my impression. You read constant complaints about Maxtor from too many people, and they can't all be stupid or incompetent users. Whether or not those people "analyze HD reliability for a living" is irrelevant. No offense, Glpster, but what is it that you do there at Maxtor?

There's actually quite a lot of "point in anyone's anecdotal evidence" when that evidence is consistent and presented over a long period of time by a lot of different people. You rarely see complaints about Seagate (except maybe from employees of Maxtor? ), so a reasonable conclusion would be that their drives are reliable and of high quality. Ditto, for the most part, Western Digital. The only other drive I can think of that has garnered more widespread contempt than Maxtor's drives is the infamous Hitachi/IBM "Deathstar."

I've only had one experience with a Maxtor drive, and that was a couple months ago. My friend had a machine he wanted to upgrade, so I replaced his two-year old Maxtor with a Seagate. The Maxtor was grinding like a skateboard wheel that just went thru a gravel pit. After only two years, that is unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. But, I will acknowledge that that's only one drive, so take that for what it's worth.

And no, I don't work for any HD manufacturer (nor am I in the computer industry at all).
No offense to anyone who likes Maxtor. Just throwing my .02. [/quote]

Ha!

No, I don't work for Maxtor. Other than owning their drives, the only other knowledge I have of them, is from driving past one of their facilities on my way to work, and another on my way to shopping when I lived in the bay area. Their grounds keeping was immaculate, by-the-way.

It's simply that I am biased against WD after having 3 of their drives go south on me. And, having had no problems with my many Maxtors, it just irritates me to no end to hear people bad mouthing Maxtor, particularly while in the same breath they are praising Western Digital!!!

At any rate, from personal experience I know how having a harddrive go bad on you, particularly more than one, can make you think that company is the worst drive manufacturer ever. That's been my opinion of WD (fair or not).

As for more stories of bad Maxtor's, who knows why that may be. Perhaps they simply sell more, and therefore will have more that go bad. The point is that you never hear any of the major hardware review sites saying "these drives have a reputation for going bad, or it has been our experience that they are less reliable, so buyer beware." In fact StorageReview.com has a Maxtor at the top of their leader board, which they probably wouldn't do if people were reporting it crashing regularly.

 

[mattburk]

I have nothing but good to say about my maxtor. A year or so back maxtor changed their warrenty on their drives to 1 year. That was the turning point for many from loving maxtor to hating them.
The newer 250/300gig 16mbsata's have a three year warrenty.
I have a raptor too, and it is great. The raptor is lounder than the maxtor though.

 

[nvbtye]

iyzaou

 

[sharkeeper]

Wouldn't you just know it?!

I was nosin' through the event viewer on a computer here and sure enough, I found the following:

The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk2\DR2 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

Now that looks like a SMART error to me. This is a Dell computer owned by the cruise line and it's a MAXTOR hard drive. Boy am I glad this kind of stuff happens to everyone else.

To the OP:

The raptor is a good "running" drive for your OS and programs. The MAX is good for mass storage although both will work well. The law of diminishing returns is rearing its ugly head with the 16 to 8 MB cache issue. Some of it could be programming as well. As DSP's get more sophisticated I suppose it will make a difference but right now we don't see it.

 

[ribbon13]

I would take the Raptor, as the 74 gigs should last long enough for an average power user to wait for 16mb seagates or just buy a Seagate 7200.8

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: canadianpsycho
I've got the 74 Raptor as boot/games/apps and a Seagate 7200.7 as storage for cmoics, ISOs, etc.

Seems like a nice combo. Didn't feel at all slower coming from 2x36 RAIDed Raptors.

I don't even need 200 + HDD space, I'm not much of a packrat.

Same exact set up as I have. It works great

 

[CQuinn]

I'm not a fanboy for any HD manufacturer, but reading these forums for a while now has convinced me that complaints about Maxtor drives outnumber complaints about ALL the other HD manufacturers' drives by at least 5 to 1 (if not more).

Two words: IBM Deathstar.

 

[Ken90630]

Originally posted by: CQuinn

I'm not a fanboy for any HD manufacturer, but reading these forums for a while now has convinced me that complaints about Maxtor drives outnumber complaints about ALL the other HD manufacturers' drives by at least 5 to 1 (if not more).

Two words: IBM Deathstar.

Yeah, you're right. In my defense, however, I was referring more to manufacturers than particular models of drives in that part of my post. And I did say further in that post that, "The only other drive I can think of that has garnered more widespread contempt than Maxtor's drives is the infamous Hitachi/IBM "Deathstar."

I haven't been 'into' computers for as long as most of you guys here at A-tech have been, so I don't have the advantage of many years of experience. I just know I keep seeing Maxtor complaints more than others on this site. I wonder if maybe they just had a few models of particularly bad drives, that they sold a ton of, and maybe those are the ones that are generating recurring complaints. Like Glpster says, though, we don't see the major hardware sites (or computer magazines either, for that matter) panning Maxtors, so who knows what the deal is.

BTW, what was the deal with the "Deathstar" drives? What made them so hated by so many people? :laugh:

 

[ribbon13]

There was one really bad batch of Hitachi/IBM drives the Deskstar 75GXP, 60GXP and 120GXP. Incredible amount of failures. That was a stellar year for me, as I replaced about 5 of them a week.

 

[WyteWatt]

Originally posted by: Ken90630

Originally posted by: CQuinn

I'm not a fanboy for any HD manufacturer, but reading these forums for a while now has convinced me that complaints about Maxtor drives outnumber complaints about ALL the other HD manufacturers' drives by at least 5 to 1 (if not more).

Two words: IBM Deathstar.

Yeah, you're right. In my defense, however, I was referring more to manufacturers than particular models of drives in that part of my post. And I did say further in that post that, "The only other drive I can think of that has garnered more widespread contempt than Maxtor's drives is the infamous Hitachi/IBM "Deathstar."

I haven't been 'into' computers for as long as most of you guys here at A-tech have been, so I don't have the advantage of many years of experience. I just know I keep seeing Maxtor complaints more than others on this site. I wonder if maybe they just had a few models of particularly bad drives, that they sold a ton of, and maybe those are the ones that are generating recurring complaints. Like Glpster says, though, we don't see the major hardware sites (or computer magazines either, for that matter) panning Maxtors, so who knows what the deal is.

BTW, what was the deal with the "Deathstar" drives? What made them so hated by so many people? :laugh:

The IBM Deathstar died like crazy one after another. I was at storagereview and anandtech at the time and saw day after day more posts of people's IBM Deathstars dying one after enough. It was amazing and horrible at the same time. The funny thing is I was just about to buy one and if I would of not found storagereviews forum I may have. Though once I saw that they were dying in storagereviews forum first I wasn't sure anymore. I then started noticing posts on anandtech forums of the IBM Deathstars dying as well. It was a mess. Almost all you heard about basically.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
There was one really bad batch of Hitachi/IBM drives the Deskstar 75GXP, 60GXP and 120GXP. Incredible amount of failures. That was a stellar year for me, as I replaced about 5 of them a week.

The 75GXP and 60GXP had some issues, the 120GXP was a very reliable drive and did not suffer from the same problems. The following model, the 180GXP is one of the most reliable drives in SR's reliability survey. The 60GXP is 4 years old already. It's about time people let this IBM bashing bandwagon die.

 

[ribbon13]

I wasn't dissing IBM, I was just answering the question.

 

[Night Blade]

Everyone has their personal issues with different brands, I guarantee you there's not one brand out there that hasn't had a batch of bad apples, for me you should get what the best price/performance, good warranty 3+ years & certainly not last low noise levels.

For the record I tried every major brand hard drive in my time, i've sold hundreds of them aswell, you get back all kinds of drives for RMA over time, not one brand stands out as bad & to avoid, except mayby Conner .

Currently running various WD's, Maxtor MX+II 250GB & recently DM+10 250GB IDE. Only drive that has failed me recently was a 3-4 year old WD 40GB, but I put that thing through the crapper .