300gb Maxtor IDE Drives shakes fist

JollyGreen · 19 Aug 2006 at 23:35

I bought 4 x 300gb Maxtor HDD drives to put into an array about 2 years ago.
About a year after that, one failed, managed to get all the data off, returned to maxtor.
Six months later, another one failed, same deal.
Now a THIRD has failed, and I'm starting to get annoyed (especially as this time it seems to have lost the data!).

Is there some way I can badger Maxtor into giving me a replacement for the fourth one (as I have no doubt that in six months it will fail), or do I have to just wait for the inevitable?

semi-pro waster · 19 Aug 2006 at 23:42

I very much doubt you can say "excuse me chaps, I have a premonition my drive may fail, could you replace it please" but if you want to try please don't let me stop you

You could try running Maxblast on the drive to see if it can diagnose any problems but unless that drive line have been recalled as a whole by Maxtor I don't think there is anything you can do other than see if it does fail. If it does then they should replace it provided it is under warranty.

JollyGreen · 19 Aug 2006 at 23:52

semi-pro waster said:
I very much doubt you can say "excuse me chaps, I have a premonition my drive may fail, could you replace it please" but if you want to try please don't let me stop you

You could try running Maxblast on the drive to see if it can diagnose any problems but unless that drive line have been recalled as a whole by Maxtor I don't think there is anything you can do other than see if it does fail. If it does then they should replace it provided it is under warranty.

Aye, five year warranty, but a 75% failure rate.. seems pretty probably the last ones gonna pop its clogs.
EDIT: Holy crap it's copying it again, COME ON HDD! YOU CAN DO IT!

Trouble is I'm a couple of hundred gigs short on free space to copy it to :S

I need a hard drive over here STAT!

Combat squirrel · 20 Aug 2006 at 00:22

your problem was gettin maxtor in 1st place there dodgy say the least, see if maxtor will consider giving you seagate drives instead (proven reliable) as seagate now own maxtor

ByteJuggler · 21 Aug 2006 at 12:49

Have you been monitoring the temps of your drives? If so, out of interest, what where the average operational temperature of your drives?

scott.holmes · 21 Aug 2006 at 15:07

HDDs can always fall off desks and things, accidents to happen especially to your 4th disk.....

semi-pro waster · 21 Aug 2006 at 16:36

scott.holmes said:
HDDs can always fall off desks and things, accidents to happen especially to your 4th disk.....

Rubber mallet time if you happen to read BOFH

I did think about suggesting that before but there isn't much point ruining a perfectly good disk just for the sake of it.

Spyhop · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:37

Combat squirrel said:
your problem was gettin maxtor in 1st place there dodgy say the least, see if maxtor will consider giving you seagate drives instead (proven reliable) as seagate now own maxtor

Cue someone saying "I have a Maxtor and it's fine, so they must all be"

oweneades · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:40

did you buy all of the drives at the same time from the same place? It could have been a member of a bad batch, which would be a good reason why 3 have popped their clogs.

I had the same issue a while back with 2 SATA seagate baracudas in a row. Both just 'died' no apparent reason. Replaced them with a IDE Samsung s-point and havn't looked back.

semi-pro waster · 21 Aug 2006 at 19:10

wush said:
Cue someone saying "I have a Maxtor and it's fine, so they must all be"

That would be me only I'm not about to make such a sweeping statement, I do have 3x 200gb Maxtors, all working perfectly and all bought together getting on for 2 years ago now. Making a statement to say that all Maxtors are great based solely on my experience would be almost as stupid as to claim all Maxtors are bad based on no personal experience whatsoever

Maybe you do have Maxtor drives and maybe you are speaking from personal experience, to be fair I don't care much either way, but I dislike the bandwagon jumping from some people that occurs to slate an individual product. I hope I haven't but I might even have done it myself on occasion because I have got caught up in the excitement but that doesn't make it right

Spyhop · 21 Aug 2006 at 22:17

Of course they aren't all bad. I have certainly never said that either.

I do own some Maxtors myself and they are still going strong. However you must have noticed that whenever someone talks about a hard drive failing, someone else often wades in and says that their similar drive is A-OK, which is pretty meaningless and not much use to anyone. Obviously the vast majority of drives from any manufacturor are going to be fine, it's just down to how likely it is for the odd drive to fail.

jas72 · 22 Aug 2006 at 15:33

when i did my Quality assurance engineering module we were shown some tech sheets from major suppliers of electronices. Most were happy with a 97.5 success rate and it was prooved theorectically that without additionally testing fully each device this is all you could hope for.

That means 3 drives per 100 may fail due to the producton line.

JollyGreen · 22 Aug 2006 at 17:56

jas72 said:
when i did my Quality assurance engineering module we were shown some tech sheets from major suppliers of electronices. Most were happy with a 97.5 success rate and it was prooved theorectically that without additionally testing fully each device this is all you could hope for.

That means 3 drives per 100 may fail due to the producton line.

Well looks like I got three of them

Tommer · 23 Aug 2006 at 01:01

maxtor are shocking, i went through 3 in 2 months on a home computer on 24/7, not really under constant stress.

When i got the third one i put it straight on ebay, got a wd drive and thats been fine 2 years on.

Really does seem that there is something up with maxtors, everyone seems to get probs with them

Coolit · 23 Aug 2006 at 06:18

I always found Maxtor drives quite good. I only had problems with two drives, both were bought at the same time, same spec and used in the same raid array.

It was caused by overheating, do you have good air flow over the drives? are they close together?

BlackDragon · 23 Aug 2006 at 10:14

After a year of use my Maxtor drive is becoming faulty. Has a single bad sector on it and im having PC problems so im assuming its the HDs fault. So i've had to fork out on two HDs from Western Digital

killer_uk · 23 Aug 2006 at 12:05

I've only ever had one hard drive fail....and yup....it was a maxtor. :rolleyes:

Combat squirrel · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:24

killer_uk said:
I've only ever had one hard drive fail....and yup....it was a maxtor.

Yup my maxtor 80gb drive failed, lasted 3years (jus as warrenty ran out!) and only other one I had die on me was a IBM deathstar, mind u it DID last about 4/5 years b4 giving up the ghost

JRS · 23 Aug 2006 at 22:59

Combat squirrel said:
your problem was gettin maxtor in 1st place there dodgy say the least

Oddly enough, I for one have never had a Maxtor go down. Had several WDs detonate themselves though....

JollyGreen · 27 Aug 2006 at 23:42

Coolit said:
I always found Maxtor drives quite good. I only had problems with two drives, both were bought at the same time, same spec and used in the same raid array.

It was caused by overheating, do you have good air flow over the drives? are they close together?

(sorry to revive the thread, posted it and forgot about it pretty much.

Yeah, the air flow's excellent as it's one of those chieftec cases with 3 fans covering the 8 HDD slots.
The dodgy ones are the bottom four of the ones in this photo.

One's missing in that photo.. hmm.. wonder why!

300gb Maxtor IDE Drives *shakes fist*

300gb Maxtor IDE Drives shakes fist