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#11
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On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:24:02 +0000, CK wrote:
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 Maxtor has been consistently the least reliable manufacturer over the years. IBM had a bad generation, the 75GXP and to a lesser extent the 60GXP that followed it, but the generations that preceded the 75GXP were very solid, and as far as I know the drives that came after the 60GXP have been fine also. Seagate has always had a good reputation. I developed a video file server system several years ago. As part of the qualification process for the drives we did extended stress tests on sets of drives from each manufacturer where we ran the drives doing continuous accesses 24/7 for 30 days. Almost all of the Maxtor drives died as did the IBMs (those were 75GXP deathstars). The Seagates held up the best and that's what we went with. Historically the big difference between Maxtor and Seagate is that Maxtor never had an enterprise market, they were a consumer drive company only. Seagate and IBM were enterprise drive companies that also produced consumer products. Consumers make their decision based on purchase price alone, they don't calculate the cost of downtime. Enterprises, in theory at least, try to figure in total cost of ownership. Reliability is worth a lot which is why companies that cater to the enterprise market worry about it much more then companies that cater to the consumer market. Companies with an enterprise culture worry about building a quality product, companies with a consumer culture worry about getting the last penny of cost out. Going forward the problem is that it's becoming harder and harder to distinguish between enterprise and consumer products. Drive companies were able to offer SCSI and Fibre Channel drives to the enterprise market and IDE to consumers. With SATA-II there is no longer a meaningful gap between the "consumer" interface and the "enterprise" interface. Prior to SATA-II an ATA drive could only schedule one operation at a time whereas SCSI and Fibre Channel could schedule many. SATA-II gives that capability to consumer drives. Also SCSI and Fibre Channel has much higher bandwidth channels, although as a practical matter the transfer rates are limited not by channel speed put by the drive heads. Serial SCSI uses exactly the same physical interface as SATA so there are no differences in channel bandwidth. As a result the SCSI and Fibre Channel drives are likely to disappear altogether leaving only one class of drive, SATA. Since the consumer market is so much larger then the enterprise market it's highly likely that the cultures of companies like Seagate and Hitachi/IBM will degrade to the Maxtor level. For now you are still much better off buying a Seagate drive but I won't venture to say that in 5 years there will still be a difference. |
#12
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"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. I've also had problems with their 250 gb DM9 drives. I had a 25% failure rate and am sticking to Seagate. I've had no problems with Hitachi or WD, but I like the 5 year warranty on the Seagate drives. Plus, they're nice and quiet. |
#13
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On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 14:34:20 -0500, Dee
wrote: 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! Hmmm, I agree. I've over a dozen Maxtors here that are still working fine. Last drive to fail was a Seagate, previously a Samsung. Both 120GB drives died well before their time. I do hear of slightly more reports of Maxtor failures though but weighing it against the lower price the primary conclusion I make is that a penny saved is another penny to put towards the backup strategy. It would be interesting though if someone had done a detailed test of where the drives failed. I don't buy the argument that they're just "lower quality" in general as their PCB looks fine. That might leave bearings or platters or heads or.... gotta be something that can be pinpointed as statistically problematic else the whole thing drifts more towards urban legend. |
#14
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On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 12:58:19 -0800, "Stillwater"
wrote: "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. I've also had problems with their 250 gb DM9 drives. I had a 25% failure rate and am sticking to Seagate. I've had no problems with Hitachi or WD, but I like the 5 year warranty on the Seagate drives. Plus, they're nice and quiet. Everytime someone posts something like this everyone kind of piles on and maybe its true. I have no idea but its easy to find impressive sounding blurbs that bash one brand or another and there are always people have problems with all the brands so then they chime in. I posted a list of posts the last time with people swearing they had horrible experiences with Seagate, WD and IBM etc as well has Maxtor. Its not that Maxtor is great I dont know that they might very well be worse than other brands but like I said Ive bought a fair amount of Maxtors way back to the 90s and havent had one failure yet and though Ive gotten rid of a lot of them they are still running in PCs of people I still know without any problems. Heres a good example. My personal one. The one brand Ive had problems with recently -- a neighbors WD 80 gig went belly up still spins but you cant access it at all after 1.2 years or so. My recent (few months old WD 200 gig ) has been a little flakey and this morning by coincidence it did the click click thing and wouldnt boot up which made my hair stand on end . After trying to reboot twice it worked. I have that PACKEd with data from my old PC so that scared the bejezus out of me. based on my experience and doing a simple search on the net heres a post that comes up right away in Google from 2003 that sounds impressive. And yet Im still going to buy WDs --- until I see definitive proof they have massive problems on all their models. Its hard to take it THAT seriously because doing a simple search you see this kind of stuff on every brand with people who swear they sell them or their friend works in a lab and 99% of 100 of them they bought in a row blew up in 5 min. Then they go to say not that some or one model may be bad or that they might have a higher incidence but imply that 99.99% will fail within 1 month or something really exaggerated like that. Thats not to say as I said I have any proof that Maxtors dont have more problems either. One thing I tend to see is people always have stories of failures and tend to look at the length of warranties as a indication of quality. So maybe the big discounts and shortening of Maxtors warranty had a big impact on the perceived quality of Maxtor drives which tends to make these stories snowball. For a long time Seagate didnt do the drastic rebate sale thing but now they are, And to give them credit they still offer 5 year and longer than 3 yr warranties on many of their sales though not all. I checked and the ones going through Compusa - some do and some dont. Some recent ones I checked had 1 yr warranties. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.eio.com/public/harddrv/0529.html As a former tech for Western Digital, it comes highly recommened to purchase Maxtor, Seagate, IBM, or Samsung drives. WD has changed their warranty to one year because the new CEO has changed WD from the cadilac of hard drives to the cheap "reveal" brand (remember them) Company memo quote "Quality means nothing anymore in this industry, its all about quanity" Well, they hit the quanity on the head. WD has more than a 10 fold in RMA drives putting the failure rate at nearly 11% or about 8% higher than any other drive on the market today. Infact most of the RMA replacement drives are other customer drives that are checked over and sent back out. So an intermintant drive could reach 10 users before it is finaly pulled for repair. The amount of loss the company has taken in the last quater has forced the company to close their support centers and switch to an out source call center with only 90 days free support after purchase and after that all support calls will be charged to your credit card. Even though I no longer work for them, it is still to bad to see this happen. Even while I and other still worked their, most of us would purchase Maxtor drives for our own use. Here is a list of drive that top the RMA watch out list. WORST WD200EB WD400EB WD400BB WD800BB WD800JB WD2000BB WD2000JB OK, BUT NOT GREAT WD200BB WD300BB WD600BB WD1200BB WD1200JB MIGHT WORK WD1600BB WD1600JB WD1800BB WD1800JB Take this info for what its worth. If you are having luck with WD drives, good for you, I hope it holds out. If you have never bought a WD drive before, don't start now. |
#15
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"Miss Perspicacia Tick" wrote in message ... 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) Doh.. OKOK.. I'm a dumbass... Eight 250Gig drives... |
#16
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"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. i build a lot of computers and have used many brands of drives... and through the years i've had at least one failure from just about every brand... although i have not seen more maxtor drive fail that any other brand... i did have one fail after only 4 weeks or so! i'm leaning more toward seagate now... and as long as they hold up and keep a good warranty...will prob. stick with them |
#17
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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. I have to agree. I had two Maxtors fail after very light use. I wouldn't buy another Maxtor. I went out of my way to get Western Digital when I replaced them. I'd trust Seagate also. |
#18
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Miss Perspicacia Tick wrote:
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) Somewhere around here I have a 15 Meg full height MFM drive - is he in the market for it? That was unlimited room when I first got it. -- "If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson |
#19
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Al Smith wrote in
: 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. I have to agree. I had two Maxtors fail after very light use. I wouldn't buy another Maxtor. I went out of my way to get Western Digital when I replaced them. I'd trust Seagate also. I have the job of removing platters from these defective drives for security reasons. Of all the drives I've opened, the newer maxtors appear cheap of craftsmanship and quality. From 80GB on up, I can tell these drives weren't built to last very long. Not true for the older models though. I have a 18GB that has lasted me for years and still kicks. Just as is reported in this thread, if I were to buy one for my own use, it would be a Seagate. At least until they start getting cheap too. |
#20
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CBFalconer wrote in :
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) Somewhere around here I have a 15 Meg full height MFM drive - is he in the market for it? That was unlimited room when I first got it. I have an 80MB SCSI from an 040LC Mac laying around someplace, if interested. |
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