R.I.P 2x Only 4 Hours old 300GB HDD

Permabanned
Joined
20 Jan 2006
Posts
144
Location
Glasgow
Leporello, I only use maxtors over past 5years and have never had a failure or lost data, I for one make my own mind up, not rumours, all HDD manus coould be slated by users who have had failures, and I can tell you for 100% fact as i fix/build PC's, ive seen all makes messed up mostly as they never get chkdsk or defragged then bad sectors creep in at start of drive till about 200KB when windows wont boot, sometimes its fixable by maxtors software (even on non maxtors), they area a good manu esp since buying quantom but i wont use once seagate takes over, I will get raptor 150's.

Go and read all reviews on the Diamondmax 10 and you will see its fast and gets great write ups, ok there is a firmware issue with NF4 mobos where you need to kill NCQ, (which does nothing for now anyhow and even slows you down), this could be blames on the mobo makers or nvidia or maxtor, there is a similar issue with some of creatives X-FI cards and NF4 mobos but that dont make them crap does it.

You could do that poll above in another forum and it would be a different manu at top of failure list so that proves nothing, i would bet most here dont even bother or know what chkdsk is or does, and i dont mean running it in the run box (only does read mode then), I mean fully 3 or 5 stage at next startup.
 
Associate
Joined
27 Oct 2005
Posts
475
Thanks for the reply friend. Obviously my attempt at irony was a failure. I must say the price on the 250Gb Maxline III looks very attractive indeed. In reality my indecision on buying this drive is based on the hassle factor involved in cloning my current Maxtor PATA drive C:\ to a new SATA drive. I have Acronis True Image 9 and I've used earlier versions of it to clone my system disk successfully when upgrading from one PATA to a newer one.

When I originally installed XP I did add the SATA drivers at the F6 stage of the install and assumed that it would allow me to add a SATA drive at a later time, i.e., now. Any comments?

Thanks again for the reply.

P.S. Re. the Maxtor firmware problem with NF4 boards. My boot drive is a 160GB Maxtor in an Epox 9NPA+Ultra mobo and I've had no problems at all with it.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
189
Location
somewhere in Kent
Maxtor, Seagate, WD will all fail over time. One particular model maybe better / worse than another but you can be sure in a few years time they won't be making that good / bad one. I doubt there are any accurate statistics available on the net to prove what make is the best but maybe i'm wrong. ;0
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Dec 2004
Posts
6,568
Location
London/Kent
The point is though, is that statistics are all we have to go on. With this being the only form of concrete evidence, we necessarily rely on it. I suppose one might use the legal test 'the balance of probabilities'. [No doubt an actuary could statistically calculate the chance of a drive from a certain manufacturer failing but until then, we go by ear so to speak]. On the balance of probabilities, it would seem Seagates offer the least chance of failure and this therefore makes them the most reliable drives. Of course, every drive will fail at some point, just how long it lasts before failure comes from QC and design. Some manufacturers are better in this than others.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
11,038
Location
Romford/Hornchurch, Essex
my 200gig maxtor is rock stable and quiet too (touch wood)

however ive had 2..... yes TWO 160gig failures... I should RMA the drive, however they only send you back recondtioned drives anyway.... and im sure thats why this one failed too...

i bet my first 160gig drive that failed got sent out to someone else too
 
Associate
OP
Joined
11 Oct 2004
Posts
71
Good News everyone:
I RMA the Hard Drives back to OC (They got there Monday)
Within 3 days 2x New Maxtor DiamondMax 300GB 6L300R0 ATA-133 16MBs where shipped out (arrived Thursday)

Must Thank OC for a Rapid Replacements was at lest expecting 7 days unto 6 weeks


More Good News: They both have been running longer than 48 Hours (Touch wood) with no problems yet :)

One thing I did notice on both drives is the Control Chip / Memory / Firmware Bios chip was of a different company (commpared to the Control Chip / Memory / Firmware Bios chip of the too the two drives that failed)
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2006
Posts
3,095
Location
Norwich
Just out of interest, are your new drives quiter as well?
I'm wondering if this & my experience (Post in Maxtor worth the risk thread) are products of the Seagate takeover.

-Leezer-
 
Can't type for toffee
Don
Joined
14 Jun 2004
Posts
17,362
Location
Newcastle U/T
tomos said:
forgot to add that i have a 30gig WD drive thats immortal!

had for about 5 years ish, and doesnt read or write above 8meg/sec, stops intermittently and makes a hell of a noise - clanging, banging etc, then resumes.

been doing that for 4 ish years and not a single bad sector yet :eek: :D

LOL that made me laugh

Got a 30Gb Diamond Max 8 here that I received from one of the guys on here and trasferred about 20 gig onto it yesterday.....

Nigh on silent and nice n fast :)

I've never had a problem with maxtors
 
Associate
Joined
17 Jan 2004
Posts
2,304
Location
Liverpool
nooooooooooooooooooooooo. my seagate drive just died i think. was using it in windows when all of a sudden i had a write err. the drive still showed up and could see the contents, but any time i clicked on a file or directory to open it, i had an io error???

checkdisks etc all failed to even start. restarted the pc and it took ages to go past the detecting drives option. the seagate isnt seen.

took it out and tried it in an external case which works fine with other drives - still no joy. looks like its just died :(

its hot as hell at the moment tho (odd since other drives in the case arent). will leave it to cool down and try again
 
Back
Top Bottom