[SOLVED] A note on hardware (Maxtor)

[poptones]

How many here use Maxtor drives? I had a couple of 80GB drives that I got from a friend. He told me up front they might be bad, I sent them in for refurb under warranty. After using them a while I outgrew them and ebay'd them. So, while they didn't fail on me, they had failed under warranty... keep this in mind.

As I sold the 80GB drives I replaced them with Maxtor 160s (the then new diamondmax plus 9 - the two disc version, not the slower 3). About six months after installing the first one it began getting slower. I didn't think about this at first (lesson here: when things change, head to the system message log and see if you can find out why) then within just a few more days I noticed it occasionaly clicking. Of course, by then there were several sectors I was locked out of.. and I ended up losing most of my music collection (again).

OK, so I had another 160 and it wasn't full. So I copied what I could to the spare space on the other 160 and filled up an old 30GB (maxtor) that I had previously lifted from my old tivo. It was a nuisance but not a trajedy.

But then I went to Maxtor's site and found they wouldn't issue me an RMA unless I first ran a diagnostic on the drive using their "powermax" software. and guess what? It was windows only.

So, my drive sat here on my desk for months since. Short on space I decided to buy another drive (I had been wanting to anyway for a 3x160 raid5). I had read good things about a certain IBM/Hitachi drive and could get a good price, so I bought one. Everything I read talked about how quitet these drives were, but the second I installed it and powered up it had this really high pitch bearing noise that never went away. Not too loud but enough to drive me nuts, like a light with a bad ballast. So, I ebay'd that drive in just a few days and bought a Seagate. I'm loving my seagate - it's dead quiet, cool running (way better than the maxtors) and seems really reliable.

Now, just the other day, my remaining Maxtor did the same thing. The computer stays on 24/7 and one day I just noticed it was taking a really long time for nautilus to open. And when it did, there were those corrupt folders again... crap. I ran diagnostics on it and sure enough, bad sectors and clicking.

In the last three years, EVERY Maxtor drive I have owned has, at some point in its life, died while under warranty. Both the 160GB models I have now beside me died less than a year after being installed. One has an expiration date of dec2006, the other has warranty all the way until aug2007!

At least they have finally posted a bootable ISO image of their DOS "powermax" diagnostic tool. I was able to download this and run it last night and get RMAs at last. If you have a maxtor drive I would suggest you also download this ISO, make a CD, and boot and run the extended test from it at least once a month. It's a handy tool to have anyway, and from what I have seen you may very likely need it.

[TravisNewman]

That's weird, I've had maxtors since I started building my own PCs (back in 99) and I've never had any problem with them (except for one that I got out of the trash at work once ;)). There are going to be lemons from every company, but I doubt this was bad luck in consistently getting lemons. Seagate's are fantastic. I have an old 650 mb seagate from 95 I think that still works like a champ. Loud and slow, but it was loud and slow new. My mom's computer, if it weren't dead at the moment, would still be using the 15 gig maxtor I bought with my first custom pc, and I've never seen any problems with it. the only time I had corrupted files was when my ram went bad, and replacing that made the file corruption stop.

[poptones]

Yes, I forgot to mention I had also owned maxtors and never had trouble with them. YEARS ago I bought a 2.5GB bigfoot (the really big 5" drives that were super thin) and that thing ran and ran until I finally decided it was just too noisy and not enough space to worry about. IOW it ran without incident until it was so old it wasn't worth using even though one still COULD use it. And THAT was a drive I bought as a refurb!

It seems to be these new drives. And while googling about this to see if there were some recalls or class actions suits or something I stumbled upon a page at a data recovery site where they noted that many of these drives suffer firmware failures! Often when the drive quits or starts clicking it's not because of bad sectors, but because the firmware (which from their description appears to be partially on the disk platter itself - makes sense I guess) has become corrupted. They pointed out they can perform a 100% recovery from drives that have failed in this manner, but I can replace eveything I had so it is not worth it to me - it's just a apin in the butt having to replace a hard drive every six bloody months.

The Seagate I bought shows only one error event in the drive log after months of 24/7 usage. It's quiet and cool (without the maxtor drive in the box it literally runs ten degrees cooler). When these maxtors come back from the shop they're going on ebay and I'm buying two more Seagates.

[Lowe]

I got a 200GB maxtor sata drive 2 months ago, it just died 2 days ago. I hope to hell it has a guarantee. =/

I'm quite pissed though, since i've been using Western digital for years and have yet to have one of them die on me, but the maxtor dies in two months. Crazy.

[nobodysbusiness]

I just had a 120 GB Maxtor die on me after a year. You can run their PowerMax diagnostic software with Linux... You just need to download the PowerMax bootable CD image and burn it. I got my RMA ticket from that and got my new drive yesterday. Of course, this has finally motivated me to set up a proper backup system. I bought another 120 GB hard drive (from Seagate, just to be safe), and have the main Maxtor drive backing up to it every night using FauBackup. This should hopefully be all I need to protect myself from now on. Totally automatic, no worries about forgetting or being to lazy to do a backup. The only thing that could lose my data would be to have both drives crash simultaneously.

[WildTangent]

i have a 40GB maxtor HD in my primary box, no failures after...about 7 or 8 months now. but i have heard bad things about larger maxtor drives regarding heat and noise, so im buying western digital for my new computer

-Wild

[super]

i too have had major issues with maxtors. never again will i buy one. i had the same problem as poptones. i originally had two drives in my computer, one quantum and a maxtor. after about 9 months the maxtor started to fail on me. but i didnt think it was the drive at first. i usually leave my computer on all the time but i started to notice that on the odd ocasion that i turned it off (if i was going away) when i turned it on again it would freeze at the bios when it started to detect my HDDs. i would have to keep pressing the reset button and hope for it to boot. ](*,)

after awhile i thought maybe it was a PSU prob so i bauoght a new PSU. same problem! but after about a month it got worse, i would be using it and there would be this clicking sould and the whole system would lock. so i pulled the cover of the computer to see where the noise was coming from. and sure enough my maxtor was the culprit. it would spin up and stop and you would hear the click. (whirrrrrrr, click! whirrrrrrr, click!) :-x

so i bought a Seagate, problem solved! (for now anyways!) :-P

[pmj]

I've had two Maxtors. Both failed within a few months.

[rpgcyco]

I had a 40GB Maxtor drive die on me recently. Was about 2 years old. Unfortunately it was my storage drive and I lost a lot of stuff, but no programming work, which is good. It had a FAT32 filesystem at the time, and had only been formatted 3 times.

My remaining two drives (80GB Seagate, 120GB Western Digitial [SATA]) are working fine at the moment. The HDD that originally came with my PC (40GB Seagate) makes the machine it is in, beep many times when POSTing..... When it stops beeping, the HDDs are detected and booting continues as normal. I don't know whether it's having a hard time spinning up or what, but once it's detected it works fine and it's lasted longer than my Maxtor mentioned above. :)

- Rpg Cyco

[Omnios]

i have a 40GB maxtor HD in my primary box, no failures after...about 7 or 8 months now. but i have heard bad things about larger maxtor drives regarding heat and noise, so im buying western digital for my new computer

-Wild

I bought a 120G WD this Christmas at first it made some bearing noise but that when't away and has been rock solid since. Just make shure you used the supplied special cable. My 40 gig Maxtor has been turning away since the summer of 2001 and other than being noisy I havent had a single problem other than noise and use it as my Linux Drive which I feel is the best dual boot arangment. Linux drive and Xp drive parted with a 50gig document drive at least I can't loose it all lol.

Also its kind of funny because I originaly bought the 120gig drive because I thought the drive was going, making noises like it was dying which when't away after I moved to a new place. The place where I lived had bad wiring and power fluxuations which may have been the cause. They might be supseptible to power spikes. Anyways sinse I moved they have both been rock solid. Future Shop has a pretty good deal on the 120 WD and I dont regret getting it.

[jdong]

I'm a hard drive maniac and been through many of them, both good and bad. I gotta say, Maxtors fail the most on me. The two most recent examples are 60 and 120GB Maxtors (both retail, less than two years old).

They love to get bad clusters here and there, gradually slowing down use until it's unacceptable.

The funniest thing, is that I accumulated 300MB worth of bad clusters on one of my Maxtors, and SMART didn't say a thing. However, after I salvaged all the remaining data onto a remote server and rebooted, THEN the BIOS tells me, "oh, btw, your hard drive might be possibly dying..."



Western Digitals and Seagates have both been reliable brands here. Seagates are almost silent but deliver the same performance as my WD's, so Seagate has turned into my favorite brand of hard drives.

[poptones]

i usually leave my computer on all the time but i started to notice that on the odd ocasion that i turned it off (if i was going away) when i turned it on again it would freeze at the bios when it started to detect my HDDs. i would have to keep pressing the reset button and hope for it to boot.

The above is exactly the symptom list for the firmware failure I mentioned. ANYONE who has a Maxtor drive who has experienced this - even once - needs to back up and replace their drive IMMEDIATELY!

[WildTangent]

I bought a 120G WD this Christmas at first it made some bearing noise but that when't away and has been rock solid since. Just make shure you used the supplied special cable.
i plan to buy an OEM through work, theyre cheaper :P but no software or cables ;)

-Wild

[aragorn2909]

Very interesting. I'll be upgrading my old 40gb Maxtor soon, and was looking at another Maxtor. Maybe not? Back to Seagate, perhaps.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Whole 1st post
I had TONS of problems with Maxtor drives say 2 years ago. I havnt really bought one since since I found really good deals on Western Digital drives.

Seagate is the next choice for my rebuilt HTPC. Didnt the IBM come with some "acoustic tuning" software?

The "Powermax" tool is great. I use it to test all my drives for problems. EVERYONE should have it. Get it HERE (http://downloads.maxtor.com/downloads/_files/maxtor/en_us/downloads/PwrMaxEn.iso).

[porter]

i have used maxtors since '90. i've had 5 different pc's with 5 different drives and have yet to have any drive die on me. the last place that i worked at had all seagate drives and within 1 year almost 1/2 of them had to be replaced due to bad sectors. no seagates for me.

[poptones]

the last place that i worked at had all seagate drives and within 1 year almost 1/2 of them had to be replaced

All the major manufacturers had to deal with this recently. What you are describing is a multiple unit purchase and the systems are all configured similarly. As such, they are all going to have drives of the same model and perhaps even production lots. When the big manufacturers first moved their production to china, MANY of them suffered this problem with bad sectors soon after installation. Maxtor, Seagate, IBM/Hitachi - they all went through it. Apparently it was due to the supplier of the platters not being familiar with the new processes required to produce such high denisty devices.

This is not at all akin to an experience repeated over years where multiple drives of different model and sharing only one element - that of manufacturer/brand - show higher than normal failure rates. As i said, I have also owned other maxtors that proved reliable and indestructable as a tank. But my experience here is with five maxtor drives, of different models, produced within the last five years... and every single one of them has failed under warranty. 100% failure rate under warranty is not a good statistic.

[skoal]

* The very first Ubuntu install for me was on a Maxtor "refurb" I received from them after my first 30GB drive failed (due to known firmware problems with specific drives). I started a manufacturer poll here some time ago, and here's (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=123483&postcount=10) an excerpt pertaining to those models in question. Apparently, there are still other "newer" models with similiar problems.

Well, the first replacement drive they sent me lasted only a week. The second replacement drive they sent at their expense (whooptee doo!) puked on me just 2 weeks ago. That 2nd replacement drive lasted from April-June (which equals a whopping 3 months of reliability). Alas, I'm back on my old Maxtor 2 gig'er, and I'm typing to you from it now.

I'll never use Maxtor products again. Period. This coming from someone who's used them reliably for 10 years, and even used them in my business selling hardware systems.

Just a few notes:

1. If you leave your system up and running all the time like I do, and all of a sudden opening up something as simple as a text file using vi starts to take a few seconds, you have problems.

2. When you start receiving "Buffer I/O errors" in a console, you're fscked at that point.

3. You can get an RMA from Maxtor and you just need to follow a few simple steps in their RMA process online. I would suggest downloading the Ulitmate Boot CD which has the Maxtor diagnosis software on there (required by Maxtor so they can get an error code before they issue you an RMA). * You do not need any OS to do this, Linux, Microsoft, or otherwise, since UCD is a bootable CD.

4. I'm currently in the process of performing a platter transplant on my old 30GB Maxtor drive and a similiar Quantum model. It's the only option I have left, outside of stuffing the drive in a freezer bag and leaving it in the fridge overnite (an old recovery trick). I lost very important information, including a lot of Ubuntu packages/development I was working on.

If you look up "caveat emptor" in a modern Dictionary, there's a one line description in there - Maxtor.

\\//_

[carlc]

I have had three maxtors fail. Two while under warranty and the third was a drive that maxtor replaced for the one that failed under warranty. I can't remember the exact problems but I do remember a lot of clicking, rebooting, and not being able to detect them.

[psoleko]

I have seen a lot of drives fail in my time, IBM (deathstar series) wins for failure rates. I have been using mostly WD since I started building my own PCs. I have a few Seagates I got a good deal on, and since I saw this crazy deal, I have a few Maxtors as well.
http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3492233

[poptones]

I have seen a lot of drives fail in my time, IBM (deathstar series) wins for failure rates. I have been using mostly WD since I started building my own PCs. I have a few Seagates I got a good deal on, and since I saw this crazy deal, I have a few Maxtors as well.
http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3492233
It's a good thing those maxtors come with a three year warranty... my bet is you're gonna need it.

[jms1989]

I surprised on how many people have had problems with Maxtor drives, I've never had any in the past 1 1/2 to 2 years I had it. I stored all kinds of stuff on it, from ISOs to movies, documents to pictures, anything. Just one thing, never install a OS on it. Windows hates it, lockups and errors. I just use my Maxtor 250GB for storage, I now use a Seagate 120GB hard drive for Linux.

The speed I get out of both of them, could be faster, but oh well. I'm only using the factory cable that came with my ASUS motherboard.

[jms1989]

Deleted

[smoker]

guess i must be lucky, i've never had a single problem with a maxtor :-)

and i'll certainly buy them again,

[kvonb]

Wouldn't touch a Maxtor with a barge-pole!

Back in 1996 we (my company back then) bought a box of 100 1gig beasts (that was a lot of storage back then!), All failed but one, it cost us a fortune in lost customers.

Even today when I find a faulty hard drive it is usually a Maxtor.

I've found over the years that it has a lot to do with where it is made, we had a batch of Seagates that were made in Ireland - BAD, Western Digitals made in Singapore - 50/50, Quantums made in anything but Japan - BAD (except Quantum "Bigfoot" - ALL BAD).

ALl manufacturers have bad batches, although they have got a lot better in the last 5 years or so.

I run a Western Digital 200gig in my server and my desktops run Seagate exclusively.

The main thing to look for when buying a drive is the manufacturers warranty, my WD200 has a 5 year, the Seagates a 2 year. This tells you that the manufacturer has faith in their own product.

[kuja]

guess i must be lucky, i've never had a single problem with a maxtor :-)

and i'll certainly buy them again,
Yes and no. If I do recall, they were bought out by Seagate a while back.

[smoker]

you are correct, kuja,

http://www.shareholder.com/maxtor/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=198048&reltype=Corporate&maxtor_section=press

[ixus_123]

I had 2 maxtor drives die on me. Both within warranty period.

Both were getting heavy usage though. I bough them becuase they were best specced in relation to price. The maxtors were desktop models - cheapest I could find per GB. Buy cheap, buy twice - very true saying!

After the first one died, I took the loss on the chin & destroyed it. I don't really like the idea of returning a broken hard drive that has all my personal finance details etc on it.

I thought it's a one off so I bought another. This one didn't totally die but after about 6 months it started making the tell tale grinding noises so I backed up my data & destroyed it. After this I decided to switch brands.

I now use western digital hard drives - I can't remember teh model number but they run about 10% more expensive than the base models & are intended for server use etc. They come with a a 3 or 5 year warrenty too which is impressive - not that I'd ever send one back.

I'll never use a maxtor again just becuase I've been burnt twice however I'm sure they might have lasted longer with disk cooling.

I always run my hard drives with a cheap heatsink / fan combo on them now & try to back up all my important data often

[mips]

At work we use to buy 1000's of Compaq pc's that came with Maxtor drives. The failure rate on those drives were very high. Fortunately they were all replaced with Segate or Western Digital which is pretty hassle free. For laptop drives Hitachi travelstar is the way to go, for some odd reason the segate 2.5" drives are not good.

[Mr.Auer]

Only one harddrive has ever died on my comps. This was one of the fabled and notorious IBM Deskstar series of a few years back, I think a 60 GB model. The drive had been in use just a few months, it was a hot summer day that day, 27 C outside. I was playing Operation Flashpoint, when there was this loud CLICK and the comp froze..

I rebooted, it went up, after few minutes again this CLICK and freeze. I power down, open the case, notice that the HD is so hot it burns my finger...So I head to a friends place nearby, do some googling and find out that most of these IBM drives have failed within the first year, all having the same problem of overheating and bearing failure. All from the same factory.

I was able to salvage all data from the drive by putting it in a freezer in a plastic bag for some time, then powering it on and moving stuff of it until it clickred, then back to the freezer. Managed to get everything out before it died for good. Got a replacement Samsung 120 GB from the store, its still in use 3 yrs later.

Other drives long in serving is a Mactor 30 GB DiamondMax, 5 yrs old I think, as this boxes system / home disk. One IBM 10 GB drive, old and loud serving as XP partition (heh). One 2 yr old Maxtor 150 GB IDE, one 2 yr old Samsung SATA 200 GB drive.

[mushroom]

I had a 120 GB Maxtor drive that failed (as in, stopped allowing any data to be read from it, accompanied with a clicking noise) within a few months under normal use conditions. It was in a well-ventilated case, and nothing unusual was done to it. I didn't drop it, spill anything on it, or anything like that; it came straight out its packaging and into my computer. The worst thing about it is that it was a warranty replacement, meaning I got two hard drives in a row that failed within a few months. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I consider that unacceptable. I'd like to replace it, but the site requires me to package the drive in a very specific way to send it to them, and that's really only possible by buying packaging material from them. I have to pay for the replacement of a replacement drive that really shouldn't have to be replaced to begin with. So...yeah, no more Maxtor for me.

[Christmas]

I have a Maxtor 160 GB with 2MB cache for two years and works the same way it worked when I bought it: very good. Maybe you just had bad luck. And Seagate, yes I heard they are very good but just a little slower. I had this Seagate at my old computer (8.4 GB) so it has about 7 years and works well even now.

[xhaan]

I have two very old Maxtor drives that have seen heavy usage and abuse, never failed and still have all their sectors intact, after many many reformats, operating system installs and reinstalls, being transferred from computer to computer more times that I care to count plus almost constant use...

I bought one Maxtor drive that was DOA, but I'm still using the replacement for it and never had a problem otherwise.

[PatrickMay16]

Agh!!!!! I have two Maxtor hard disks, one bought in 2003 and the other in September of 2005. I have not had any problems with either of them. They've both been in use almost daily ever since I got them.

Maybe I'm just lucky?

[blueturtl]

With Maxtor it's usually good luck if the drive reaches an age where you won't throw it away for being too small.
Seagate's drives since the Barracuda IV are probably the quietest and most reliable, but a tad slower than the competition.
Fujitsu drive's are totally awesome in terms of performance if you can get your hands on one, but they only come in sizes up to about 120 gigs since apparently they are not manufactured anymore.
Western Digital drives are very queer. On the one hand I have seen many old ones, but on the other they make strange noises and sometimes fail on sectors that later appear to be ok.

A drive that fails after 3-4 years is a poor quality product IMO.