Maxtor hard drives fail too soon.

I just lost 5 Maxtor drives in my CAD labs this month.
They were about 2 years old, and out of warranty ..
naturally. I called Maxtor, and the reply was, "Well,
we have to make money somehow. These long
warrantys are costing us too much." I also just lost
a brand new Maxtor 160 gig SATA drive .. in the
system about 2 weeks. Bad spots all over the disk.
I'm pretty sure from the symptoms I'm seeing that
I'm going to lose another 10 or so by summer. They
are all DiamondMaxes. I've tested several of them,
and they won't even re-format. Chkdsk sees bunches
of unreadable sectors sort of randomly over the disk
..... then there will be a good area .. and then another
bad area. Looks like bad recording media.

johns

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 01:48:28 GMT, Thagor
wrote:



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.

Cheap craftsmanship and quality in what ways, exactly?

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:04:04 -0600, "philo" wrote:


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

Its rational wether this Maxtor bashing is grossly exaggerated or not
to buy Seagates with 5 yr warranties if its close to the same price
since its a better deal and you can get them pretty low through FRYs
and Outpost.

However Im not sure if COMPUSA deals are different since everhthing
coming through there on sale seems to have a 1 yr warranty but Ive
seen Seagates offered though there with only 1 year warranties. Also
people have said at deal sites that Seagate has one of worst rebate
records ---- many say theyll never get one because of lots of
suspicious invalid rebate rejections often claiming wrong serial
number or some such thing, You eventually get them it seems but you
have to call many times to fix the problems according to the gripes.
Much more than the usual rebate problems where you have to call to
fix.

Also they ALL reduced their warranties to 1 year a few years ago, A
simple search brings that up and Toms Hardware has a rant on it
http://www4.tomshardware.com/column/...anties-01.html

and Anands has a thing on it at the time a few years ago too. Then
Seagate upped it to 5 years recently and Maxtor actually upped theirs
to 3 years too despite the fact that they havent been doing that great
recently. Actually maybe for a while. I havent followed them recently
but was speculating on a platter maker recovery in the late 90s since
they had gone through a bust cycle and were hopefully going to
recover. The Register has a thing on how Seagate was in the red Q4 but
made money I think in the recent qtr and Maxtor was in red - both were
laying off people it said to reduce costs.

Some interesting comments about maxtor drives and other drive
manufacturers in this thread. I wonder if one of the reasons that
maxtor has a high subjective failure rate is because it has a larger
retail consumer space. It is sure hard to pass up those maxtor drives
at the local stores on rebate, and knock on wood maxtor has made good
on any rebate I have sent in.

I suspect that fiber channel and other drive technologies will evolve
to something faster and larger. It is very unlikely that the high end
will be replaced with sataII. That would be going backward.

Anyway all drives can fail including high end SCSI drives. A western
digital SCSI drive failed today in one of our systems. Does that mean
I should never buy western digital or SCSI drives?

I guess the real take home point of this thread is one should backup!
Hard drives can fail from any manufacturer.

Since maxtor has been so successfull, one thing is sure success is
usually imitated. So watch out in the future.

My 2 cents I think samsung makes the best drives. I have no way to
prove this at all.

Later,

Alan

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 23:45:23 -0600, Alan Walpool
wrote:


Since maxtor has been so successfull, one thing is sure success is
usually imitated. So watch out in the future.

They were the most aggressive at Compusa the large chainstore in the
US,. They were the first maker I noticed that had drastically
discounted drives after rebate on sale way below everyone else
virtually every week at Compusa , Office Depot and Office Max. WD
finally jumped in after a while and then Seagate mostly through
Outpost/FRYs - another place in the US. So in that sense they already
have and they all went to 1 year warranties a few years ago. Actually
as some early articles noted Seagate went to 5 yr warranties and then
Maxtor increased it to 3 years so they are sort of copying seagate
now.

Actually how much of the HD does Maxtor make anyway? I recall as Ive
noted when I was trading in and out of stock before the tech crash one
of the areas someone pointed out was the platter makers and there were
several which I freaking cant remember anymore. They were losing money
like crazy , and it surprised me cause for some reason I thought
Maxtor and Seagate made their own platters. So how similar are all the
drives?

Alan Walpool wrote:

I guess the real take home point of this thread is one should backup!
Hard drives can fail from any manufacturer.


That's hitting the nail on the head.

It doesn't matter if a product has a 10 year warranty if the end user
neglects to backup their data.
--
"Even a broken clock is going to be once twice a day." - Jedidiah

CK - agree. Over the years, I've had exactly the same experience with
Western Digital. They scream and howl, make an incredible amount of noise,
then sh*t and die. I just had one go out in a system in which the Maxtor
and the IBM deskstar drives were 4 and 6 times as old, respectively, and
just kept on chuggin.

btw I have a 420 meg connor , which just puts those other old drives
mentioned to shame, and i will let it go for a fabulous price. and a 5 meg
seagate, which i may be willing to bundle, but finding it may take a short
bit of time. but, don't worry, i won't charge your credit card till i get
the number.
Mike
"CK" wrote in message
.uk...
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.

Noozer wrote:
"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...


LOL!! I was only messin' wit'cha! ;o)
--
Facon - the artificial bacon bits you get in Pizza Hut for sprinkling
on salads.

" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:04:04 -0600, "philo" wrote:

Its rational wether this Maxtor bashing is grossly exaggerated or not
to buy Seagates with 5 yr warranties if its close to the same price
since its a better deal and you can get them pretty low through FRYs
and Outpost.

However Im not sure if COMPUSA deals are different since everhthing
coming through there on sale seems to have a 1 yr warranty but Ive
seen Seagates offered though there with only 1 year warranties. Also
people have said at deal sites that Seagate has one of worst rebate
records ---- many say theyll never get one because of lots of
suspicious invalid rebate rejections often claiming wrong serial
number or some such thing, You eventually get them it seems but you
have to call many times to fix the problems according to the gripes.
Much more than the usual rebate problems where you have to call to
fix.

Also they ALL reduced their warranties to 1 year a few years ago, A
simple search brings that up and Toms Hardware has a rant on it
http://www4.tomshardware.com/column/...anties-01.html


snipped

one thing i should mention if looking for warrantly on a harddrive...
is to always go back to the manufacturer rather then the vendor.

the last drive i replaced was an 18 month old wester digital
that came with a one year warranty (from the supplier)
however checking with the mfg...it was still under warranty...
and from the day i returned it to them...
to the day the replacement came was about 8 days...

Couldn't agree more. I went shopping for a new IDE HD last week to replace
my fourth Maxtor in the last five years . Saw the Maxtors (133/7200) and one
heavily-discounted (also with $50 mail-in rebate) Seagate (100/7200) on the
shelf side-by-side. Bought the Seagate.

"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