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 bull**** 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.

--
Regards from John Corliss

Of course any hard drive can fail, but I have had outstanding service from
my Western Digital HDs over the last 10 years. Not a single failure on at
least 6 PCs.

"John Corliss" wrote in message
...
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
bull**** 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.

--
Regards from John Corliss

A friend of mine is running eight 250meg Maxtor drives in a RAID5 array...
He's had two drives fail in four months.

I'd be avoiding Maxtor these days.


"John Corliss" wrote in message
...
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 bull**** 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.

--
Regards from John Corliss

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 ]
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 bull**** 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.

--
Regards from John Corliss

John Corliss wrote:
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.
snip


Just over a year ago I had four Maxtor hard drives fail within the first
week of use. All were Diamond Max Plus 9 (6Yxxxx) series IIRC. Two became
very hot during operation, well over 60°C. Granted, this is a very small
sample, but four drives in such a short period ? Makes you wonder.

Seagate and WD are my personal choices.

Noozer wrote:
A friend of mine is running eight 250meg Maxtor drives in a RAID5
array... He's had two drives fail in four months.

250meg eh, Noozer? ;o) That's all of 2GB. I didn't think drives that old
could be 'RAIDed'. ;o)



--
Facon - the artificial bacon bits you get in Pizza Hut for sprinkling
on salads.

S=2EHeenan wrote:
John Corliss wrote:
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.
snip


Just over a year ago I had four Maxtor hard drives fail within the
first
week of use. All were Diamond Max Plus 9 (6Yxxxx) series IIRC. Two
became
very hot during operation, well over 60=B0C. Granted, this is a very
small
sample, but four drives in such a short period ? Makes you wonder.

Seagate and WD are my personal choices.

The Samsungs are supposed to be the quietest these days. I got a 120gb
Seagate 7200.7 hd, but soo realised that Seagate were no longer the
quietest :-(. It is a good drive though.

I had the same issues with my IBM drives [ replaced 4 in 3 weeks ] guess it
just happens if you get one from a dodgy batch

--
Kind Regards

www.networkingbasics.co.uk
www.ckconsultants.co.uk
wrote in message
ups.com...

S.Heenan wrote:
John Corliss wrote:
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.
snip


Just over a year ago I had four Maxtor hard drives fail within the
first
week of use. All were Diamond Max Plus 9 (6Yxxxx) series IIRC. Two
became
very hot during operation, well over 60°C. Granted, this is a very
small
sample, but four drives in such a short period ? Makes you wonder.

Seagate and WD are my personal choices.

The Samsungs are supposed to be the quietest these days. I got a 120gb
Seagate 7200.7 hd, but soo realised that Seagate were no longer the
quietest :-(. It is a good drive though.

wrote in message
ups.com...

S.Heenan wrote:
John Corliss wrote:
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.
snip


Just over a year ago I had four Maxtor hard drives fail within the
first
week of use. All were Diamond Max Plus 9 (6Yxxxx) series IIRC. Two
became
very hot during operation, well over 60°C. Granted, this is a very
small
sample, but four drives in such a short period ? Makes you wonder.

Seagate and WD are my personal choices.

The Samsungs are supposed to be the quietest these days. I got a 120gb
Seagate 7200.7 hd, but soo realised that Seagate were no longer the
quietest :-(. It is a good drive though.

I have 4 x Samsung 120 GB drives in a RAID setup (I chose RAID 0+1 rather
than RAID 5) and the only noise I can hear from them is the click and whirr
of them powering up at boot time (and the machine is very quiet in all
respects such as low noise HSFs for both CPUs and a very quiet Tagan PSU).
Even when I run defrag they're still quiet as a mouse and if that wasn't
good enough they can be quietened further with a Samsung supplied acoustic
management utility. The 4 Samsungs and 3Ware RAID card replace a single 100
GB Maxtor I had in the machine which failed just about the time the warranty
expired (Maxtor's Powermax utility came up with an error code on it but it
was otherwise still running fine after 3 years). Given that Maxtor have now
reduced their standard warranty for most drives to 1 year I'd be very weary
of buying such a drive. I bought a 250 GB Maxtor drive just before my 100 GB
one failed (for a different machine) and it developed a fault after running
powermax on it to do a zero fill, it was a drive with a 3 year warranty.
Maxtor replaced both under warranty - I was lucky enough to get a 120 GB
unit as the replacement for the 100 GB. Samsung retail drives come with 3
year warranties in the UK and as long as the size is big enough (currently
the largest is 250 GB but soon to be 400 GB) - they're my drive of choice at
the moment.

Paul

There may be bad lots of hard drives, but generalizations are totally
useless.

I have Western Digital, Samsung, Seagate, IBM, Maxtor, and Connor hard
drives that are over 10 years old that are still working. In fact I one
Toshiba drive that is going on 20 years old that is still working. At
the same time I have had Seagate, Western Digital, Connor, Maxtor, and
other drives that have crashed well before I though they should.

Hard drives are a combination of mechanical and electronic components,
none of which are perfect. Look at automobiles and how specific models
are being recalled lately while others aren't.

Life's a bitch! And **** happens!