Maxtor Worst hd ever

Mr.INSANE

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Joined
Aug 21, 2005
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Hello first off i would like to say every hd i have owned usaully segate or wd where great and i had no problems until I purchased a

60 gb diamond max plus 9 ata 133 hd

The harddrive seemed fine in the begining and was great
but eventually while a low resource game was running it bluescreened. upon restarting the harddrive made large clicks and failed to boot. Well no biggie maybe its just this harddrive.

So called up maxtor they sent me a new one

Went on for about 3 months when the harddrive started acting weird and not always working. One day it just wouldnt work. This harddrive had some very important information on it and now its most likely gone.

So called up maxtor but what no my warranty is over so i cant get a new one

So far heres my conclusion This perticular maxtor hd is crap
i never plan on buying from maxtor again

I have one other maxtor in my xbox it has done fine

i hope you guys wont have to suffer becuase of maxtors inability to make harddrives correctly
 
Name your power supply and cooling. Then, and only then, will I even possibly consider it Maxtor's fault. A post like this is like buying a car and not changing the oil and then complaining when it dies. Feed it right, care for it, and amazingly, it'll work a lot better.

 
There is some very credibile advice given by poster above about PSU. But then again Maxtor drives are at the VERY bottom of the food chain >>>>> their sales strategy is cheap drives >>>> not quality drives >>>> same old same old you get what you pay for !!

And for those that cant swallow that pill >>>> how me new servers being equipped with maxtor drives >>>>>> that would be like buying old used oil for a brand new car !! :D
 
linderman said:
There is some very credibile advice given by poster above about PSU. But then again Maxtor drives are at the VERY bottom of the food chain >>>>> their sales strategy is cheap drives >>>> not quality drives >>>> same old same old you get what you pay for !!

And for those that cant swallow that pill >>>> how me new servers being equipped with maxtor drives >>>>>> that would be like buying old used oil for a brand new car !! :D

I have numerous maxtor drives and haven't had a problem with a single one. So I could say that Maxtor's are perfect as far as I know.

I would be wrong, but it is very easy to make generalizations like that. I have honestly heard of nearly as many problems just like this with WD drives and to a lesser extent Seagate. Maxtor is just the whipping boy because they are smaller.

And consider learning how to use commas and periods instead of >>>>'s, its just a little annoying.
 
while Maxtors will operate perfectly fine in a certain temperature psu envelope, that envelope is very small compared to some other manufacturers like WD, the drives of which can easily withstand 10 degrees more and not crap out like Maxtors.

plainly put, this means that Maxtors are made to lower standarts
 
All drives are crap. I've seen failures of every kind from every make and model on the market for the last decade. They're imperfect devices only to be trusted as far as you can hurl them. Don't blame Maxtor, blame the market for accepting mediocre products across the board.
 
if you want your shit to last then, you gotta go with the enterprise solutions like err scsi :)

But then again shit will be obsolete by the time it out lasts your ATA drives. damned if you do... damned if you don't....
 
Yeah maxtor is known for having faults in their drives...thank god seagate is buying them and getting rid of them for good.

...Dan
 
davidlem said:
All drives are crap. I've seen failures of every kind from every make and model on the market for the last decade. They're imperfect devices only to be trusted as far as you can hurl them. Don't blame Maxtor, blame the market for accepting mediocre products across the board.

This man speaks the truth.
 
it was the whole diamondmax 9 line, i bought a diamondmax 9 120 gig hd off someone (used) worked fine the next day it dropped over 50 sectors and would get crc errors with everything. i sent it back got a refurb and its showing signs of failing 3 months after. plus i have a friend who went thru 6 Pata 133 DM9 80gb's one refurb after another from maxtor so im never going to trust there products aigain.

im sure its prob correct that maxtors have low tollereneces for incorect voltages but some things are just unacceptable.
 
I honestly don't care if there is a correct PSU and temp config for maxtor drives. That is no excuse for their drives being the absolute worst on the market.

In my absolutly correct oppinion if you can't buy a hard drive put it into a computer and have it run without a problem it's crap.

Every maxtor drive that I or people I know have bought in the last 3 years starts making loud clicking and grinding noises after 6 months and dies after a year. The have been an exception here or there but that's pretty much how maxtors run.

Every WD drive I buy runs perfectly fine in every configuration of computer I put it in.

So my logic here is that if I have to watch my PSU and temps to run Maxtor......screw maxtor I will buy WD.
 
ethos747474nikon8989 said:
I honestly don't care if there is a correct PSU and temp config for maxtor drives. That is no excuse for their drives being the absolute worst on the market.

In my absolutly correct oppinion if you can't buy a hard drive put it into a computer and have it run without a problem it's crap.

Every maxtor drive that I or people I know have bought in the last 3 years starts making loud clicking and grinding noises after 6 months and dies after a year. The have been an exception here or there but that's pretty much how maxtors run.

Every WD drive I buy runs perfectly fine in every configuration of computer I put it in.

So my logic here is that if I have to watch my PSU and temps to run Maxtor......screw maxtor I will buy WD.


I never understood where people get information like this. I work in the testing department of large raid enclosure/controller manufacturer. We go through 1000's of disk from Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi and WD. Are internal research shows that the Anualized Failure Rate is about the same for all of them within a few tenths of a percentage. We really beat the shit out of the drives running weeks on end at full IO capacity. Grant our environment is with good quality power supplies and dedicated cooling it is still very stressful testing.

In general we see good overall performance from Maxtor's and the WD's. Seagate tends behind the curve in performance and recently lots of issues with compatibility with SAS setups. Hitachi was really only used because for a long time it was the only 500gb drive and one of our OEM's lover hitachi drives.
 
draksia said:
I never understood where people get information like this. I work in the testing department of large raid enclosure/controller manufacturer. We go through 1000's of disk from Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi and WD. Are internal research shows that the Anualized Failure Rate is about the same for all of them within a few tenths of a percentage. We really beat the shit out of the drives running weeks on end at full IO capacity. Grant our environment is with good quality power supplies and dedicated cooling it is still very stressful testing.

In general we see good overall performance from Maxtor's and the WD's. Seagate tends behind the curve in performance and recently lots of issues with compatibility with SAS setups. Hitachi was really only used because for a long time it was the only 500gb drive and one of our OEM's lover hitachi drives.

How can you not understand where I got my information? Where my information came from is first hand experience and I stated that in my post that your quoting. I really don't care that you think your a flying ninja or something special when it comes to hard drives.

I have personally seen the problems with Maxtor that I'm describing and I have seen it in other peoples Maxtors. So now you obviously do know where I got my information from.
 
ethos747474nikon8989 said:
How can you not understand where I got my information? Where my information came from is first hand experience and I stated that in my post that your quoting. I really don't care that you think your a flying ninja or something special when it comes to hard drives.

I have personally seen the problems with Maxtor that I'm describing and I have seen it in other peoples Maxtors. So now you obviously do know where I got my information from.

I think he's saying what is your sample population for your conclusions. His sample population seems much larger and thus it would seem that he would be able to draw better conclusions about the overall target population of drives.

Your sample population is not clearly defined and smacks of anecdotal evidence.

Everyone's had a bad experience with hard drives. I had 2 IBM 60GXP's die on me within a week of each other, 1 maxtor 60gb drive die, and 1 seagate 200gb DOA. I know someone who had a WD drive die on them. I guess I should boycott everyone but Samsung?

Unfortunately hard drive manufacturers do make judging drive failure rates hard for the consumer, but that doesn't mean you can just say "I had a bad experience, and I read about a few others, so all their drives are crap."
 
ethos747474nikon8989 said:
I honestly don't care if there is a correct PSU and temp config for maxtor drives. That is no excuse for their drives being the absolute worst on the market.

In my absolutly correct oppinion if you can't buy a hard drive put it into a computer and have it run without a problem it's crap.

Every maxtor drive that I or people I know have bought in the last 3 years starts making loud clicking and grinding noises after 6 months and dies after a year. There has been an exception here or there but that's pretty much how maxtors run.

Every WD drive I buy runs perfectly fine in every configuration of computer I put it in.

So my logic here is that if I have to watch my PSU and temps to run Maxtor......screw maxtor I will buy WD.

This means you are full of crap. You can't have it both ways.

Either EVERY maxtor you have heard of has failed, or there have been exceptions.

I have used many maxtor drives and never had a problem. Does that mean they are perfect? Nope

I don't understand why people get so militant about hating maxtor... You have bad luck, or more likely you have a shitty setup that kills drives. If you don't want to deal with buying quality PSU's, then don't buy maxtor, but don't pretend like it is their fault that you kill drives.
 
spotpuff said:
I think he's saying what is your sample population for your conclusions. His sample population seems much larger and thus it would seem that he would be able to draw better conclusions about the overall target population of drives.

Your sample population is not clearly defined and smacks of anecdotal evidence.

Everyone's had a bad experience with hard drives. I had 2 IBM 60GXP's die on me within a week of each other, 1 maxtor 60gb drive die, and 1 seagate 200gb DOA. I know someone who had a WD drive die on them. I guess I should boycott everyone but Samsung?

Unfortunately hard drive manufacturers do make judging drive failure rates hard for the consumer, but that doesn't mean you can just say "I had a bad experience, and I read about a few others, so all their drives are crap."

Yes you definitly should boycott every hard drive maker except Samsung. I'm sure that I could give you some "anecdotal evidence" to support that claim. Look I don't care what you buy go build a raid array out of crappy maxtor drives for all I care. If my advice is so worthless don't bother to read it.
 
ethos747474nikon8989 said:
Yes you definitly should boycott every hard drive maker except Samsung. I'm sure that I could give you some "anecdotal evidence" to support that claim. Look I don't care what you buy go build a raid array out of crappy maxtor drives for all I care. If my advice is so worthless don't bother to read it.

It's easy for reasonably knowledgable people to ignore you, but this forum is frequented by people that are new to the hobby, and they might actually believe you.

You should really calm down. He respectfully responded to your post, and you acted like an asshole.

WD Issues???
There is a guy that has had lots of issues with WD drives, so I guess you are an idiot for using them... :rolleyes:
 
In my experience maxtor drives have had a habit of dieing fairly quickly.However with WD I have not had any problems. So if my opinion counts buy WD over Maxtor.

Also just becuase you might test HDs in greater numbers doesn't mean that other peoples opinions aren't correct or at least valid.
 
Fons said:
In my experience maxtor drives have had a habit of dieing fairly quickly.However with WD I have not had any problems. So if my opinion counts buy WD over Maxtor.

Also just becuase you might test HDs in greater numbers doesn't mean that other peoples opinions aren't correct or at least valid.

People's personal experiences can definately be statistically incorrect because they don't use enough drives. So I would say that other people buying decisions can't be incorrect... but their opinions certainly can be misinformed and wrong.

Its called overconfidence. He has experienced several drive failures with maxtor, so he extrapolates his very small experience much farther than it should be.

If you use thousands and thousands of drives, and do the calculations for reliability, then your findings are much much more valid than a person's who might have bought 15 drives.
 
ethos747474nikon8989 said:
Yes you definitly should boycott every hard drive maker except Samsung. I'm sure that I could give you some "anecdotal evidence" to support that claim. Look I don't care what you buy go build a raid array out of crappy maxtor drives for all I care. If my advice is so worthless don't bother to read it.
That's just what I did.

And I had a full box of dead WD disks in my basement until we cleaned it out. Not to mention another box full of dead everything elses. Drives fail, it's a fact of life. But the reason I had a box full of dead WDs and not an equal distribution of manufacturers is a single situation with improper power and cooling. This is why I'm so passionate on this topic.
Fons said:
Also just becuase you might test HDs in greater numbers doesn't mean that other peoples opinions aren't correct or at least valid.
If you're using the proper equipment, and they're not, their data is invalid. Running F1 cars on regular unleaded is going to cause problems, and so is running hard drives without fans and on crappy 12V lines.

 
ethos747474nikon8989 said:
How can you not understand where I got my information? Where my information came from is first hand experience and I stated that in my post that your quoting. I really don't care that you think your a flying ninja or something special when it comes to hard drives.

I have personally seen the problems with Maxtor that I'm describing and I have seen it in other peoples Maxtors. So now you obviously do know where I got my information from.

What it boils down to is that he has real first hand experience with many drives while you are talking about relatively a handful of drives compared to what some of us will see in our liftimes.

I work for a data recovery firm and I've had probably close to 2,000 drives go through my hands, and I can tell you they all fail on an equal basis. Not to mention the work drives that we clone, reboot, wipe, clone to, reboot, wipe, all day long... those things take a beating, and we don't treat them nicely. I've had WD's and Maxtors fail on me all day long.. as well as other manufacturers... we just tend to have more Maxtors and WD's in stock than anything else.
 
Fons said:
Also just becuase you might test HDs in greater numbers doesn't mean that other peoples opinions aren't correct or at least valid.

Actually, if it's an empirical test, and their opinion is contradictory to the empirical test, then they ARE wrong. My god, do people know nothing about math?
 
davidlem said:
All drives are crap. I've seen failures of every kind from every make and model on the market for the last decade. They're imperfect devices only to be trusted as far as you can hurl them. Don't blame Maxtor, blame the market for accepting mediocre products across the board.
Well fucking said. :mad:
 
Just for the record the ones that died where both on 400 watt psus and cooled very well.

Plus i had 2 hard drives in my duel p2 only the maxtor died

A point i must say

I am in know way implying that all of maxtors harddrives are crap but from my experince they have failed on me numerous times and only this certain type has failed


Also read the thread peeps it says worst HD ever not hard drives, hard drives would be implying they all suck
 
unhappy_mage said:
That's just what I did.

And I had a full box of dead WD disks in my basement until we cleaned it out. Not to mention another box full of dead everything elses. Drives fail, it's a fact of life. But the reason I had a box full of dead WDs and not an equal distribution of manufacturers is a single situation with improper power and cooling. This is why I'm so passionate on this topic.

If you're using the proper equipment, and they're not, their data is invalid. Running F1 cars on regular unleaded is going to cause problems, and so is running hard drives without fans and on crappy 12V lines.


Hey I just got back from work, I had to laugh when the first coustomer through the door had a dead hard drive. It was about a year old and guess what brand it was MAXTOR. On a side note it will be replaced with a western digital since we don't sell maxtor because they are crap. Not stocking maxtor at the PC shop I work at isnt my choice though it's the owners.

Have fun with your maxtor hard drives.
 
Dan17 said:
Yeah maxtor is known for having faults in their drives...thank god seagate is buying them and getting rid of them for good.

...Dan

Umm, what exactly is that supposed to mean? Can you point me towards evidence/data that shows that Maxtor is "known" for having faults in drives? There are a couple models out there that aren't so hot, but those issues were addressed in the newer ones. The same can be said of basically any drive manufacturer that ever existed.

If you look at overall reliability ratings (all drive shipments both to OEM's and elsewhere), the DM10/ML3 drives are at or near the top to being best in class. You guys may have your personal experiences and anecdotal evidence, but I'll take data from over 10+ million drive samples over personal experiences any day.

We seem to have this same basic thread around like once a week around here - Brand X/Y/Z drives failed - I'm never getting them again! It's the same damn thing as owning a car. Just because something breaks on your or someone you know's car and you have to take it to the shop (or DIY) to get it fixed doesn't mean you never buy that brand again. Good lord, if everyone used that mentality there wouldn't be any cars sold ever again! It's the same thing with hard drives - they aren't perfect, and they never will be. All manufacturers will make drives that fail - period. In addition to that, it may not even be the manufacturer's fault anyway that the drives are failing - I've seen plenty of online retailers use non-approved packing to ship drives in causing early time to failures on drives.

Sorry to go on a rant, but I'm tired of seeing these same threads all the time. Seagate, Maxtor, WD, Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu (and Cornice I guess) - they are all the same in terms of quality. As an individual consumer they should all be the EXACT same reliability to you (except for those drives models that have obvious design flaws - you know the ones. 75GXP, DiamondMax 8 I think it was, etc).

Can we PLEASE stop having these kinds of threads posted, or at least try to keep them to a minimum or something?

And thanks for the Seagate comment - some of us that work our asses off at Maxtor really appreciate stuff like that. /end sarcasm
 
Dark Ember said:
Umm, what exactly is that supposed to mean? Can you point me towards evidence/data that shows that Maxtor is "known" for having faults in drives? There are a couple models out there that aren't so hot, but those issues were addressed in the newer ones. The same can be said of basically any drive manufacturer that ever existed.

If you look at overall reliability ratings (all drive shipments both to OEM's and elsewhere), the DM10/ML3 drives are at or near the top to being best in class. You guys may have your personal experiences and anecdotal evidence, but I'll take data from over 10+ million drive samples over personal experiences any day.

We seem to have this same basic thread around like once a week around here - Brand X/Y/Z drives failed - I'm never getting them again! It's the same damn thing as owning a car. Just because something breaks on your or someone you know's car and you have to take it to the shop (or DIY) to get it fixed doesn't mean you never buy that brand again. Good lord, if everyone used that mentality there wouldn't be any cars sold ever again! It's the same thing with hard drives - they aren't perfect, and they never will be. All manufacturers will make drives that fail - period. In addition to that, it may not even be the manufacturer's fault anyway that the drives are failing - I've seen plenty of online retailers use non-approved packing to ship drives in causing early time to failures on drives.

Sorry to go on a rant, but I'm tired of seeing these same threads all the time. Seagate, Maxtor, WD, Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu (and Cornice I guess) - they are all the same in terms of quality. As an individual consumer they should all be the EXACT same reliability to you (except for those drives models that have obvious design flaws - you know the ones. 75GXP, DiamondMax 8 I think it was, etc).

Can we PLEASE stop having these kinds of threads posted, or at least try to keep them to a minimum or something?

And thanks for the Seagate comment - some of us that work our asses off at Maxtor really appreciate stuff like that. /end sarcasm

It's not your fault that your product sucks it most likely the designers fault, and try not to be like your product, sensitive
 
I had a 50% failure rate in the 4 DiamondMax 9 I had, aka two out of 4 died. I actually lost parts of a RAID-5 from this nonsense because the second disk failed before I got everything off.

To add insult to injury, Maxtors RMA service was a major annoyance so I ended up only RMAing one of them and wrote off the cash for the other one. No more Maxtor for me.

Collecting my own experience and merging it with forum reports it seems certain that the Diamondmax 9 were very sensitive to power fluctuations. In my case it was a bad UPS, other people lost DM9s after city power went off and on a few times.
 
uOpt said:
I had a 50% failure rate in the 4 DiamondMax 9 I had, aka two out of 4 died. I actually lost parts of a RAID-5 from this nonsense because the second disk failed before I got everything off.

To add insult to injury, Maxtors RMA service was a major annoyance so I ended up only RMAing one of them and wrote off the cash for the other one. No more Maxtor for me.

Collecting my own experience and merging it with forum reports it seems certain that the Diamondmax 9 were very sensitive to power fluctuations. In my case it was a bad UPS, other people lost DM9s after city power went off and on a few times.

I think we've discussed why a sample of 4 drives doesn't provide good data for failure rate.
 
Fons said:
It's not your fault that your product sucks it most likely the designers fault, and try not to be like your product, sensitive

Holy crap, get it through your head, the product doesn't suck. You just think it does.
 
Fons said:
It's not your fault that your product sucks it most likely the designers fault, and try not to be like your product, sensitive
-1 Flamebait. You may start talking shit when you start producing a better hard drive.

In case it hasn't been re-iterated enough, there's nothing wrong with Maxtor drives, but the fact that you'll probably only deal with a dozen or two drives make statistically insignificant differences between manufacturers look huge.

If you cool and power the drives right, nothing will go wrong with them.

For the love of god, close this thread. It's all the stereotypes come out to play, and nobody is going to benefit from this.

 
TheTMan said:
I think we've discussed why a sample of 4 drives doesn't provide good data for failure rate.

Why do Maxtor owners confuse personal opinion with a large double-blind scientific study - the latter is not what we're discussing here and never has been. The following seems to be the response to every manufacturer's fanbase to all criticism.

Statement: I personally don't use Maxtor (or Brand-X) because about half of them that I've owned have failed. Brand-X seems unreliable.
Response from Brand-X User: STFU!! What the heck!!! Your personal experience is not a scientificially verifiable testing situation. Until you can fund a ten-thousand drive eight year reliability survey controlling for all testing conditions I'll go go off on an rant everytime you say anything bad about Brand-X.

Statement: I've had bad experiences with Brand-X's RMA department so I prefer Brand-Y because they have a better warranty.
Response from Brand-X User: OMFG ORGL! I have never had Brand-X drive fail so the RMA service and warranty don't matter. If Brand-X failed on you it's because you have magical hard-drive breaking fairies in your case, Brand-X NEVER BREAKS!! If it does it's YOUR FAULT.

Statement: Brand-Y is quieter then Brand-X, so I always use Brand-Y.
Response from Brand-X User: NO. Show me a dB readout proving Brand-X is louder, until then you're not allowed to express your opinions. Oh yeah, BRAND-X is quieter, I know because I work at a super-duper sound testing hard drive replacement factory and deal with over fifty million-bajillion drives.

Either head over to Storage Review and look at some actual statistics or stop ripping the opinions of others as unscientific by providing your own meaningless unscientific and most of all completely unprovable anecdotes. It's pretty tiresome.
 
TheTMan said:
I think we've discussed why a sample of 4 drives doesn't provide good data for failure rate.

As I mentioned, there are lots of other people with problems with the Diamondmax9.

At what point does it become a statistically meaningful size.

How many more suspected bad drives am I supposed to buy just to reach a statically meaningful number?
 
uOpt said:
As I mentioned, there are lots of other people with problems with the Diamondmax9.

At what point does it become a statistically meaningful size.

How many more suspected bad drives am I supposed to buy just to reach a statically meaningful number?

A few thousand, but then it would still be your fault because of the special magnetic fields in your area that are attenuated to specifically cause the Diamondmax9 to fail. Or the hot breezes blowing through your case combined with your unstable power supply which only breaks Maxtors. :p

BTW: Seagate is very reliable. I've never personally had one fail, anyone claiming they are unreliable just has really bad luck and can't be counted as statistically significant because they're dealing with a sample size smaller then one trillion drives. I'm an importer for the galactic empire of Xanthor and we buy about three trillion HDs every year so that's proof you can't argue.
 
Hvatum said:
Why do Maxtor owners confuse personal opinion with a large double-blind scientific study - the latter is not what we're discussing here and never has been. The following seems to be the response to every manufacturer's fanbase to all criticism.

Statement: I personally don't use Maxtor (or Brand-X) because about half of them that I've owned have failed. Brand-X seems unreliable.
Response from Brand-X User: STFU!! What the heck!!! Your personal experience is not a scientificially verifiable testing situation. Until you can fund a ten-thousand drive eight year reliability survey controlling for all testing conditions I'll go go off on an rant everytime you say anything bad about Brand-X.

Statement: I've had bad experiences with Brand-X's RMA department so I prefer Brand-Y because they have a better warranty.
Response from Brand-X User: OMFG ORGL! I have never had Brand-X drive fail so the RMA service and warranty don't matter. If Brand-X failed on you it's because you have magical hard-drive breaking fairies in your case, Brand-X NEVER BREAKS!! If it does it's YOUR FAULT.

Statement: Brand-Y is quieter then Brand-X, so I always use Brand-Y.
Response from Brand-X User: NO. Show me a dB readout proving Brand-X is louder, until then you're not allowed to express your opinions. Oh yeah, BRAND-X is quieter, I know because I work at a super-duper sound testing hard drive replacement factory and deal with over fifty million-bajillion drives.

Either head over to Storage Review and look at some actual statistics or stop ripping the opinions of others as unscientific by providing your own meaningless unscientific and most of all completely unprovable anecdotes. It's pretty tiresome.

No one is talking about scientifically sound testing environments or anything. We're talking overall rate of field returns. THAT is the data that needs to be looked at. Testing environments don't really mean much pertaining to this conversation. This is real, end user environments causing returns. Just because you personally happen to have a drive fail on you doesn't mean that everyone else will or that the product is bad.

Say, for example, you bought 3 hard drives made by whoever. All 3 of those die - the conclusion is then drawn that all drives made by that manufacturer are bad. However, the manufacturer actually shipped 25 million of those drives over the life of the product, and your 3 were the only ones that failed over the entire lifespan. Yes, that is an unrealistic scenario, but it is the same concept. Your own personal experiences cannot possibly provide a good enough cross section to determine whether that product is bad or not. If you have drives fail on you - sounds like you had some bad luck. It happens with ALL BRANDS. And also, I don't think anyone is claiming that there is a brand of hard drive that never breaks - that would be an equally ridiculous claim.


unhappy_mage said:
For the love of god, close this thread. It's all the stereotypes come out to play, and nobody is going to benefit from this.

I second that...
 
Ive had 6 or more Maxtors in my day, and theyve been the only brand ive had that havent died. Ive had 4 WD's die on me, and 3 of my friends did the same. Its a crap shoot with hard drives going bad really, its not even about the company most of the time. Youll hear just as many people have problems with one then another and then others say theyve never had a single issue. People believe Maxtor to be of bad quality and cheap because of the past, but they are actually solid drives now and ive got two of them that are 7+ years old and still ticking just fine. The only hard drives you should really stay away from are the "white label" oem drives, ughh.

Another thing people dont think of is heat, some folks will pile on the drives together without any cooling at all, and end up killing the top drive from the heat below and itself. I always use hd cooling fans on mine to get the maximum life out of my drives.
 
Dark Ember said:
No one is talking about scientifically sound testing environments or anything. We're talking overall rate of field returns. THAT is the data that needs to be looked at. Testing environments don't really mean much pertaining to this conversation. This is real, end user environments causing returns.

Sure, you're talking about overall rate of field returns. But absolutely every single person in this thread including you has provided useless anecdotes regarding their personal experience. One second you claim there is too little evidence to draw any solid conclusion, then a sentence later your parroting off about how all brands fail at the same rate (Excuse me - Where is your infallible evidence that you demand from everyone else?).

You can talk about overall rate of returns, spontaneous combustion, explosion or whatever, but unless you've got actual evidence to backup your claim it's all just conjecture.

Dark Ember said:
Say, for example, you bought 3 hard drives made by whoever. All 3 of those die - the conclusion is then drawn that all drives made by that manufacturer are bad. However, the manufacturer actually shipped 25 million of those drives over the life of the product, and your 3 were the only ones that failed over the entire lifespan. Yes, that is an unrealistic scenario, but it is the same concept. Your own personal experiences cannot possibly provide a good enough cross section to determine whether that product is bad or not.

Good. So stop making erroneous claims that you know the exact failure rate of each manufacturer to be equal. It's perhaps a good staring assumption for a research project, but hardly strong enough to go around shooting down anyone who believes otherwise.

Dark Ember said:
And also, I don't think anyone is claiming that there is a brand of hard drive that never breaks - that would be an equally ridiculous claim.

I do see a general trend of users claiming that Maxtors or whatever brand don't fail often, but if they failed for some other guy it's his fault. He didn't cool it enough, his computer has bad Karma, he had too many brownouts - god forbid the hard drive has an actual unavoidable mechanical failure. "If Brand-X fails it's YOUR FAULT"
 
I have two Maxtors running strong Right now.

I have had 5 other (WD, SeaGate) drives die.


It's not the drives. That's just like saying you want to go Intel because your AMD failed.

Doesn't work like that.

You lose.
 
bLaCktIGErs91 said:
I have two Maxtors running strong Right now.

I have had 5 other (WD, SeaGate) drives die.


It's not the drives. That's just like saying you want to go Intel because your AMD failed.

Doesn't work like that.

You lose.

I think we all lose for participating in this thread.
 
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