Maxtor Woes

[989MOB]

Has anyone encountered problems with the
-MAXTOR D740X 40GB IDE HDD FDB* Ultra ATA133* 7200RPM
-Fluid Bearing Model
I've had two friends recently purchase these drives, they both had problems with them.
Anyone else suffered at the hands of Maxtor.....

==I like my Seagate it goes==

[RockBoy]

currently suffering
drive not present during a cold post do a soft reboot and there it is

its also a little rattely

going to do powermax on it and then most probably take it back to purchasing outlet

RB

[whetu]

Originally posted by 989MOB
==I like my Seagate it goes==

i've always used seagate and never had a problem... quantum on the other hand :mad:

[989MOB]

Personally i think i'll stay clear of the ATA133 band wagon.
Western digital seem tempting though

but i'll probably stay with Seagate

[SilverPriest]

My D740X is running fine.
Hasn't missed a beat :S
I have the 60 gig model if that is of any consequence....

[RockBoy]

yeah mines the 60 as well :(

RB

[swiftynz]

i've had seagate drives for a while now and theres only been one slip up. a 20gb U6. it died after one week of operation at 124mhz fsb. it was covered under warranty, but i'll never buy another low-end drive, especially seagate.

at the moment i've got 2 Barracuda IV's. one is 40gb and 6 months old. the other is 80gb and is about 1 month old. no problems, but i wouldn't expect any.

i have a mate who has 3 Barracuda IV's, 2 80s and a 40. his are about 12 months old and he's had no problems. the fact that he's had no problems really surprises me since two of them are stacked right next to each other! they had been like that about 5 months until he added some fans to cool them. (some of u may remember him from L3, twist)

in summation: DAM good and cheap drives. i'd say they will last forever if you put active cooling on them too. :)

[Ragnor]

I've got a 60gb Maxtor ATA 133 .. no problems here

[Humantuckshop]

Originally posted by swiftynz
i've had seagate drives for a while now and theres only been one slip up. a 20gb U6. it died after one week of operation at 124mhz fsb. it was covered under warranty, but i'll never buy another low-end drive, especially seagate.




I've had a 20gig U6 die on me also, I sold the replacement to KJ. ;)

[KingJackal]

Originally posted by Humantuckshop
I've had a 20gig U6 die on me also, I sold the replacement to KJ. ;)

lol - that's the working one!

Drives I've used in my PC for extended periods of time include 4 Seagates, 1 IBM and 2 Maxtors. 2 of the seagates have failed :eek:.

Maxtor
30GB DM60+ 7200rpm ATA100 drive. Ran as my primary for a good 8 months ( that's a looong time for something in my rig - things normally get upgraded long before then :D ).

60GB D740X 7200rpm ATA133 drive. Is my current primary drive. I've had her about 2 or 3 months, and have had no issues.

Seagate
1GB SCSI 5400rpm drive. Ran as a CD-writing cache drive. Bought second hand and ran for 4 or 5 months. No problems.

40GB 5400rpm ATA100 drives - 2x. Both as secondary drives. Both have failed. Both will be replaced soon.

20GB 5400rpm ATA100 drive. See above :D. Been running her for a short period of time as a secondary - no problems.... yet.....

IBM

20GB Deskstar 7200rpm ATA100. Ran as a primary for a short while. Had no issues at all.

Quantum
6GB Bigfoot 3200rpm drive. Despite numerous grumblings about these drives, I had no problems. Still going - currently the primary ( soon to be upgraded ;) ) hard-drive for the family machine. It IS slow though... :D

so what you're saying is...??
The drives that HAVE failed on me are the cheap drives. I refuse to think of Seagate as a poor brand given the above. Their high-end ( the SCSI drive - hey! It WAS high-end back when it was made :D ) drives seem to be far less problematic. Also, note that my good Maxtor/IBM trackrecord stem from using their high-end drives?

Could it possibly be yet ANOTHER case of 'you get what you pay for'?? :eek: :D

[Sydog]

Ive got a 40gb 7.2k fdb ata133 and a 80gb of same spec, have had no problems with them at all and they are alot cooler than my 20gb seagate i sold to N

[oiad]

I bought 3 of the 40gb FDB Maxtor drives from Johnny about 3-4 months ago, I've never had a problem with them and i've never ever ever heard them.

Maxtor are one of the best drives I've ever bought, I have a 15gb maxtor in my server and that runs like a charm.

[SecretSquirrel]

Originally posted by swiftynz
i've had seagate drives for a while now and theres only been one slip up. a 20gb U6. it died after one week of operation at 124mhz fsb. it was covered under warranty, but i'll never buy another low-end drive, especially seagate.

at the moment i've got 2 Barracuda IV's. one is 40gb and 6 months old. the other is 80gb and is about 1 month old. no problems, but i wouldn't expect any.

I dont understand, you say you're not happy with Seagate drives, yet you still have 2 Seagate drives?

I have an old Baracuda II, and it does ok, but any higher than 145mhz and it becomes toast. Reformat/reinstall/re-lose all my data.

My next hard drive purchase will of course be [pimp mode] the Western Digital 80gb JB drive...its only ATA100 but it SHORE IS TITE! [/pimp mode]

[Ragnor]

The Western 80gb... is that the one with 8mb of cache.. those things are mean mean mean .. nice

[thabass]

I have got 3 maxtor 80gigs (7.2k, FDB) under raid 5, works a treat.. nice and fast...

Very Very quite drives..

Seagate in taiwan is considered a buget brand.. i had 3 IV's 60gigs under raid and had all sorts of hassles like no boot detection/data coruption etc...

989MOB - Try changing your IDE cables.. also if your MB is old you may need update your bios for drive to work properly with ATA133. My Abit KT7A-Raid did...

[989MOB]

thabass-
"989MOB - Try changing your IDE cables.. also if your MB is old you may need update your bios for drive to work properly with ATA133. My Abit KT7A-Raid did..."

I don't actually have any Maxtor drives.
As I said above 2 of my friends had problems.
Thanks though I'll pass the advice on to my friends
i believe one of them did the old RMA and now is having no problems.....he new something was wrong when it took 3hrs
to format!

[Agent666]

are they running them on a ATA133 controller??

if not you need to change the drives to work at ATA100 or ATA 66 depending on your friends MB ....using maxtors utility...... its on there website somewhere

[Grrr!!]

I have 2 trusty 500MB seagate HDDs, I usually just use them for file transfers from school to home and vice versa (leaving them loose in my bag with no static protection http://apolyton.net/forums/images/smilies/mischief.gif. They make good Hackysacks too :).

[shag]

I've had that 40 gig fluid maxtor for around 3 months now with no problems yet either. I've found that one of my 30 gig dm60+ drives in the raid array occasionaly doesent detect but thats only happened maybe 4 - 5 times in the last year or so. It's always dectected again after a reboot.

[SilverPriest]

Right, my D740X is getting damn suss.
My computer BEEPED at me tonight on POST.
Just when it was detecting the drives.
Funny thing is, i had no sound producing devices plugged in @ the time, and i dont have a pc speaker in my case....
Turned it on again, with just the D740x HD plugged in, and it beeped again, unplugged D740X, plugged everything else back in, no beeps, amazing.....

Still, i scanned the HD using the windows scandisk, and using maxtors own drive diagnostic utility, and it fixed probs with my 536DX maxtor drive, but nothing with the D740X
Most infuriating......

So, at this point i cannot recommend Maxtor to anyone, due to this irritating experience.
Still runs fine in windows, but i get errors on post every now and again, corrupted files, which it fixed and my PC continues on its merry way.
:mad:
Will be returning this as soon as possible....

[swiftynz]

hehe just saw this from JUNE that i forgot to respond to :p
Originally posted by SecretSquirrel
I dont understand, you say you're not happy with Seagate drives, yet you still have 2 Seagate drives?
i did not say that i was not happy with seagate, but i did say i wasn't happy with their low-end models (namely the U series). the two barracuda iv's i have are brilliant but the only low end seagate drive that i have ever owned (20gb U6) failed within one week.

as KJ said, it looks like you get what u pay for.

sorry to hear about that maxtor silver :(

[dumass]

I have 2x 60gig maxtor 740DX (or whatever) FBD's raided

No problems here, just the loading noise sounds abit rattley/funny, but it works, on my ATA133 raid controller :)

[Ragnor]

Seems like a higher then normal failure rate for the FBM drives going from what I've read on various forums.

[KingJackal]

Originally posted by Ragnor
Seems like a higher then normal failure rate for the FBM drives going from what I've read on various forums.

FBM? ( FDB? ;) )
Yeah, I've noticed that too. Which is VERY strange given that FDB reduces the number of moving mechanical parts in the drive ( which should therefore also improve their reliability ).

Looks like a teething problem.... which I don't like, given my primary is a..... :eek:

[Ragnor]

Ya it's probably supposed to be FDB..

FDB: Fluid Dynamic Bearing
FBM: Fluid Bearing model

Tomato
Tomatoe

Sorry to freak you out like that KJ :D

/me pats his 60gb Maxtor ATA133 non FDB

I was fairly broke at the time, it was like $20 cheaper then the FDB model... may turn out to be a blessing