Maxtor vs. Western Digital

mrjimmy · Nov 8th, 2003, 12:13 PM

I'm currently having problems with the stock Maxtor 40gb hard-drive in my 533mp. It likes to freeze and emit a bizarre double beep.

I'm contemplating purchasing a Western Digital 80gb/ 8 mg buffer.

Any thoughts on either of these issues?

Thanks,

mj

MacDoc · Nov 8th, 2003, 12:38 PM

We've had grief with Maxtor

WD very good, Seagate best of the crop for reliability and they are quiet.

Akai · Nov 8th, 2003, 01:16 PM

Maxtor tends to be the cheapest drives but also the most unreliable. Also ever since they dropped their warrenty down to 1 year it isnt worth it. Get a WD SE with 8meg buffer and 3 year warrenty. I own a few never had and problems. I once had a problem with a WD Raptor and their RMA service was awesome!! I had a brand new drive in 2 days.

monokitty · Nov 8th, 2003, 02:34 PM

Hmm, I have to disagree on the Maxtor-bashing part. Multiple machines in our house hold have Maxtor hard drives and not only do they work well, but they are quiet as well. We've had one in the Beige G3 for close to 2 years now and never had a problem with it. Have one in the iMac as well and never had an issue with that drive, either.

Akai · Nov 8th, 2003, 03:30 PM

Lars trust me. ive got a few dealer friends and all of them complain how Maxtors are a hassle. They get more deffective returns then WD and Seagate. Ive had quite a few maxtors die. One had bad sectors that windows, etc couldnt even pick up. It wasnt until it reached the point of 13MEG of bad sectors that they finally started being picked up.

Luckily I purchased it from Costco so i returned it with no hassle.

Anyways every manufactorer is bound to have defects, just maxtor tends to have more. And I think even MacDoc knows this juding by his post [img]smile.gif[/img]

kent · Nov 8th, 2003, 04:36 PM

I agree with MacDoc, Seagate drives are excellent. Last fall, I installed an 80 GB Seagate (@7200 rpm) in my PC and I've been very happy with it. It's extremely quiet as well. A hard-drive is one of the most important components in a computer (if not the most important), having HDD problems is a nightmare so, I'm willing to shell out a tad more cash for reliability. The HDD is the one computer component that you shouldn't go cheap on. I paid about $180.00 CND at NCIX for the 80 GB drive... now a year later you could probably pick up the same drive for less...or move in to the 100 GB realm!

Go Seagate!

Lawrence · Nov 8th, 2003, 05:12 PM

Hmmm...Let's see...
I recently replaced the Western digital stock hard drive that
kept failing in my Beige G3 with a 40 gb Maxtor hard drive.

The Maxtor drive is a heck of a lot quieter than the Western
digital drive and runs a lot cooler.

Are you guys trying to tell me that this Maxtor drive is
going to fail as well?

Dave

TroutMaskReplica · Nov 8th, 2003, 05:40 PM

dolawren,

no one can predict whether your HD will fail.

maxtor is the lowend for hard drives, though.

kent · Nov 8th, 2003, 05:42 PM

Absolutely not dolawren! You may be just fine, HDDs can be finicky no matter what brand you buy. Maxtor probably has more of the market share because they're cheaper and thus we hear more about Maxtor drive failures than with other brands. I've had two HDD failures on PCs: one drive was a IBM and the other was a Seagate (the seagate problem was associated with the slave connectivity, so I didn't lose any data). Seagate makes great drives and they have a great reputation, arguably, they make a higher-quality drive. This however does not mean that Maxtors or WD drives are crap, but you tend to get what you pay for (most times).

MacDoc · Nov 8th, 2003, 05:43 PM

An original WD in a beige is rare.
We've seen many iMAcs come in with whining Maxtors - the equivalent Quantums -separate companies at the time rarely fail.

Seagate scsis used to be a joke - very fast but fail regularly.

It's a real surprise that Seagate does well now but they look to be the best manufactured. Maxtor looks cheap but so does WD.
Seagate looks well built and seems to last.
WDs do run hot but we've had very few failures and we go through a 1/ dozen 40 gig WDs a WEEK!!!!
Plus perhaps 20 - 30 other drives in machines and Firewire cases.
Far and away the largest failures are Maxtor from earlier machines but of course they provided a great number of drives.
Right now I'd take Seagate for reliability and WD for warranty and speed.
We'll see how the new Maxtor 300s make out. 5400 rpm and that tends to be less stress on the mechanism. Going to be fast as that size = very high data density.

Wow 1.25 Terrabytes inside a G4 tower