I vote for WD # 1 Seagate # 2 and would pass on Maxtor all together lumping it with Hitachi as "highly suspect". Way too many failure problems in the past recent years, used to be another story. After Maxtor bought Quantum, reliability went out the window. Friday night Jim Cramer was asked the same question about buying Maxtor stock on "Mad Money" and he even said what Jam and I just did, for the saqme reasons!

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I didn't give any reasons (at least not in this specific thread) but for the most part, I agree with Rich. I have no experience with Seagate other than replacing bad ones for other people. I have a stack of them (mostly older) in my basement, but there are a couple of 40GB Barracudas. I've only used one Maxtor HDD in any of my personal rigs & had no probs with it. I did have a Quantum BigFoot fail on me many years ago & I have several bad Quantum HDDs in my basement as well (some have Maxtor labels but are actually Quantum drives). As far as I'm concerned, buying Quantum was a bad move for Maxtor & I've avoided them ever since. I run Western Digital almost exclusively & have never had any problems with them. I have replaced a few bad ones for other people though. No HDD manufacturer is immune to failures... http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/35929.html Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @ 8.5 x 200MHz 768MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro

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Well, i've had a 40GB Wester Digital fail but i use a 8.4Gb Quantum Fireball since '99 and i'm still storing on it all my important files, it's true it's noizy and a bit slow for nowdays but i consider it to be the most reliable hdd in my system (along a WD and a Seagate) Never used Maxtor but i've heard bad reviews about it...

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Thanks for all your replies, the Maxtor and the Seagate are at the same price ($99) so i have no problems with its price.

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@ Jam Haha! I missed your Tommy Boy reference before. @ tacubaya Buy whatever you want. Run it long enough, and it's going to fail, period. Most sys. builders I know have a brand they will never buy again (mine is Maxtor)--it's funny how these guys all hate a single, different brand. I think they all suck equally. "If it ain't broke, upgrade anyway."

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I had a Maxtor HDD for five years and it was super noisy. Now I have WD and Seagate drives. They are very quiet.

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I've just had three Maxtor drives fail in a row: I bought a 200 GB drive, which failed after a couple months. I RMA'd it and they sent an identical replacement, which lasted less than a month before crashing *hard*. I RMA'd that one and they sent a 250, which lasted for about 8 months, then died today. It's not covered under warranty anymore, so I bought a Seagate instead. Don't waste your money on Maxtor. Seagate has a much longer warranty period now too - 5 years instead of Maxtor's 1 year.

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Excuse me but ...... in europe, Maxtor provide either a 3 or 5 year warranty on drives. So. why did your warranty run out after just 1 year ?. I would suggest if Maxtor won't honour the replacement in the US then try running the RMA through the european server. I'm not promising you anything but on the whole IT Trade seems an awfull lot more freindly over here. (Even if the bombs are going off!)

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According to Maxtor's site (www.maxtor.com, click Warranty Services and then Warranty Periods), retail packaged ATA hard drive kits have a 1 year warranty in North America, 2 years in Europe/Middle East/Africa, and 1 year everywhere else. The Maxtor drives I saw at the store when I bought my Seagate also had 1 year warranties. Every warranty status page I can find on there says my warranty ran out on 4/30/2005. They carried the warranty period over from when I bought the first drive, not when they shipped the replacement... so the replacement I got in October was only covered under warranty for 6 months! Even if there is a separate place where I can check my warranty according to Maxtor Europe (which I haven't found), I doubt they'd pay to ship a replacement from Europe to the US.

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Interestingly enough, I have had both Maxtor and WD drives fail, but I also am currently using both a Maxtor (c:) and a WD (d:) on this computer since 2002~3 with no problems at all. This leads me to assume that hard drive failures are usually caused by the user or something external (perhaps a power supply). Defects and such will happen but are equally as possible between any mfr. Like NAN said, go for the best price (and perhaps invest in one of those hard drive cooling do-hickies that attach to the bottom of the drive. The 2 drives that failed: WD24300 Caviar (~4.3gb). Now that was an old sucker, from 1998 and I noticed it starting to go cookoo (ticking and data corruption that spread on the disk) by around 2001~2002. In a completely different system I had a Maxtor 94610U6 (~40gb) and that failed its SMART test and has all kinds of bad sectors and is completely unformatable. (tried it in with a unix fdisk) That one was made in 2000 and failed in '03 if I'm not mistaken. HOWEVER I currently have no Seagate paper weights... coincidence or a testament to Seagate...

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This may sound completely odd but only failed drives i've replaced have been in pre manufactured pc's or completely old pentiums of the 1-4 gig era. Compaq's with Segate 6-8 gig drives seemed to be constant replacements. HP's with Quantum drives 6-10 gig drives- also a crapper. I have a 30 gig maxtor drive I put in a custom build Linux box of mine that's still working after almost 3 years. It has previously rested in a few other pc's as well. As for my favorite I choose Western Digital as I have 1 120gb, 3 80gigs, 2 40's, 15,10, and bunch of old 4,3,& 2gig drives. If I had to choose between maxtor and segate i'd probably choose segate myself. I also believe monthly scandisc's & defrags help maintain healthy hard drives. Anyone had any experiences with the new 400 gig segate? Those look awfully tempting @ outpost.com ! ASUS A7V8X Athlon XP 2700+ @ 2.17ghz 768MB DDR 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

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