Hi guys. I was just looking at the parts price list for my local computer shop and was amazed to see that hard drive prices have recently plummeted, Ie; 2 weeks ago I paid around $10 more for a 250GB western digital compared to the prices at the moment.

Maxtor are the cheapest now, only $87 for a 500GB drive!!! I'm considering getting a new drive to replace one of the 200GB drives that seems to be getting a bit fatuiged (startup dosent sound good, makes windup noises for about 10 mins after turning on)

Now to the point of my post:
I have 2 drives in my computer, Seagate and Maxtor, and I dont like either of them. They were purchased when Maxtor's acquisition of Seagate was news, so I was wondering if Maxtor's drives have changed any lately. I prefer Western Digital because they are quiet and run relatively cool, but if Maxtor has improved in that respect I'll probably go out and buy their cheap 500gig.

I should add, the money is Australian dollars and yes I have backed up my data for my ailing drive.

Thanks for any help/insight/opinions

Mattwizz3

I'm not sure about this, but from what I remember reading, I think that Maxtor hard drives are generally less reliable than Western Digital hard drives. By the way-Seagate acquired Maxtor, and I don't know if that has improved the quality or not. Personally I've used mostly Western Digital hard drives, and they have been reliable and quiet, as you said.

heh, thanks kx5m2g. I got the whole acquisition thing backwards. I have had a few WD's and there always great. WD seems to have made a bit of a name for it's self without trying too hard (for the standard drives anyway). Almost every person I know with a decent amount of computer knowledge prefers WD's drives.

Anyone had a Maxtor recently?

Mattwizz3

I don't think Maxtor drives are any less reliable.
I think the reason you hear about them failing more often is because of the sheer numbers of them out there - it wasn't that long ago that probably more of them were sold than any other brand.
I've been using one constantly since 2000 and it's still good.
Lots of computers I've helped people with have Maxtor drives exclusively.

How old is your Maxtor? It has a three year warranty and can be expected to last at least that long.

"...(startup dosent sound good, makes windup noises for about 10 mins after turning on)"

Are you sure that's coming from the drive?
Some optical drives are noisy, and if you have a CD or DVD in them they will spin while booting, when Windows first loads, and at ssemingly random times in Windows often NOT lighting up the led on them, unless you deliberatly access them.
Well worn case fan and cpu fan bearings often make noises for a while after the computer has been booted after the computer has cooled to room temp, especially it has not been running for many hours, such as overnight. Some well worn PS fans will do that too.

As noted above, Seagate acquired Maxtor - at first they were still made at separate places by different people, but more recent Maxtor drives may now be made alongside Seagate ones by the same people.

However, most Seagate drives and SOME WD drives have a five year warranty, rather than the three year warranty most hard drives have.

In general, stay away from buying the slimmer, less than ~1" thick drives - they tend to run hotter and fail sooner.

I honestly don't know that one drive is better than another. The pc I am on now has two WD's inside about two and a half years now. The pc in the living room the kids use has two 160gig Maxtors about seven years old now. One of them did start to make noise after three years sounded like a needle jumping on a metal disk. I cleaned the heck out of the pc with a vacume and reformatted and it quit making noise and hasn't sence.

I am by no means a computer pro I am just a guy that likes to tinker and build things. Some folks are scared of the inside of the case so they have asked me to build a few for them over the years. I almost always used Maxtor mainly because that was the main brand that Staples carried and it was two blocks away. Only seen one bad one and I bet if my son had not dropped it down the stairs it may have lasted longer.

Practice makes perfect but only if you practice perfectly!

Hey tubes

I believe the thickness of a drive is determined by the number of platters inside. As arial density has inscreased the number of platters required for a certain drive size may have fallen. This would result in less platters. I seriously doubt the manufacturer's are attempting to conserve materials.

One comment about Maxtor drives is this. CompUSA sold Maxtor drives with a 1 year warranty on them and you could BUY additional warranty time. CompUSA also had their house brand, which was a rebranded Maxtor. Both of those particular series of Maxtor drives were not the most dependable. That is not to say the current offerings are bad.

At one time all OClockers were using IBM Deskstar drives because they were more tolerent of out of spec PCI bus speeds. However as it turned out later IBM deskstar drives were failing at high levels.

I have used multiple brands over the years and have had the best luck with WD. I have never had a WD drive fail on me, knock on wood. That said, I believe there is a problem with their external units.

I'm not really worried about reliability, but generally WD drives are much quieter. Both my Maxtor and Seagate drives were reasonably quiet when I got them, but after 1 month they were both fairly loud when accessing data.

I've checked the CD drives and even disconnected power from them, My PSU is nearly new and very quiet, only one case fan and its not the problem either. Very sure its a hard drive, it sounds very much like a hard drive noise. I am still able to access the drives normally when its making the noise though. I haven't really investigated the noise any further as my computer is working fine. The only reason for replacing the drives is to reduce the noise during read/write operations. The computer has been this way for a month or so now.

Just want to know if new ones are still loud like mine are, if they are I'm happy keeping these.

Mattwizz3

"In general, stay away from buying the slimmer, less than ~1" thick drives - they tend to run hotter and fail sooner."

I was told that by a guy who services servers that are on 24/7. He said they usually last at least as long as the warranty, but tend to fail earlier than the thicker drives.

I looked in my parts bin and only found one drive that was thin. It was a 1GB Seagate. So it might be a moot point anyway. May make some sense though if anyone is actually making thinner drives.

I actually have 2 30GB and 1 10GB slim Maxtor drives and they seem to work fine despite being pretty old.

I think I'll just keep my drives for now untill I need more space... which may happen soon, Top Gear season 11 starts soon! Only 19 days.... I've got 30GB of top gear alone, Videos are really starting to eat up my hard drive space.

Sorry for the late reply, for some reason I've been unable to get on computing.net for the last couple of days.

Mattwizz3

CN was down for 30 hours.

OK, I thought it was strange. Thanks.

Mattwizz3