My Maxtor Madness

Posted on 09 April 2007 by


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Over the years I have had several external hard drives. My more recent ones are regular HDDs in USB/Firewire cases, but the first two that I bought were from Maxtor’s line of external HDDs.

The first drive I bought was a 160GB 5000DV. That was back when they were made out of a blue plastic case as opposed to the metal ones. Less than 12 months later the drive just suddenly stopped functioning. If you connected the drive to the computer you would hear the familiar Windows XP hardware connection sound, but the drive would never appear in My Computer. I called Maxtor and they arranged for me to receive a replacement from the place I purchased the drive from. Nevermind the data that was on it, I just had to let it go.

So I picked up the replacement drive, a 200GB 7000DV. I suppose they thought the slight capacity increase (although 40GB wasn’t slight back then!) would compensate me for the inconvenience and data loss. The new drive worked fine for about 2 years and then I started to have problems with it. Several times when connecting the drive to the computer (either with Firewire or USB2) the HDD simply would not appear. As soon as it did I got all my important data off it. The drive seemed to be working normally now, but unwilling to takw any chances it was relegated to use only for stuff that I could lose.

Then the odd grinding and clicking noises began. This was one sick HDD. But well out of the warranty, and without any thing important on it, I can see the day when it literally will grind to a halt.

Unfortunately my bad experience with Maxtor does not end there. In that two year period of happiness with the 200GB 7000DV, I picked up another 7000DV, a 160GB version. Up until just 3 days ago it was working fine, until it diappeared from My Computer and everywhere else it should appear. The drive is spinning inside, so it seems to be “working”. Last night I ripped into the drive, which as you’d expect is just a Maxtor drive in a Maxtor enclosure. Two screws and a little bit of prying with a small flathead to remove the plastic plugs at the front and back of the drive and I’m in. I tried connecting the drive to my MacBook Pro with a USB IDE cable I have, but I get the same result as in the Maxtor case. Not that I expect it to change anything, but I am going to connect it to the internal IDE on my desktop to see if I can get more of a response.

This drive I do have data on that I want, as it has my two previous backups before migrating to Mac. I am searching my other drives for another copy, but so far I haven’t found anything.

So 520GB, about $400, and a lot of frustration later I am stuck with two dead or dying HDDs. I can tell you I am NOT pleased, and I can foresee the day when my dad’s 300GB Maxtor kicks the bucket, adding to the pile of lost data an burned cash. From now on with will be making a DVD copy of my backups (even if it will take 12-15 DVDs) and will never go near a Maxtor drive again.

UPDATE: According to the label on the drive it was manufactured on April 3rd, 2004. Thats only 3 years of use at the most, almost to the day! That is just disgraceful.

CIMG8465

This post was written by:

- who has written 208 posts on Gear Diary.

Mitchell Oke is a 22 year old Bachelor of Creative Technology (Digital Video Production) from Sydney, Australia. He's previously worked for News Ltd as a Multimedia Producer, and currently works as a freelance editor and videographer. He has a great love for gadgets and cars, always wanting to have the latest and greatest phones, notebooks and other electronic toys. He is a huge fan of Star Trek, Top Gear and Seinfeld, citing them as his favourite TV shows. In December 2006 he became a Mac convert, having used Windows since he was 5.

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  • http://filipbaraka.com filip

    Hi there

    My Lacie D2 fw800/400 failed on me few days ago, after opening i found western digital disk inside, wasn’t suprised at all.
    I managed to restore it once using DiskWarrior (great mac app)
    but after few days clicking sound started again and soon after died
    again, managed to access the data (backed up anyway) and restore it.
    Went to store and placed new seagete in D2 housing. ;)

    I tryed many hdd’s since i’m managing smaller network (about 20computers) least problems with hitachi and really zero problem with seagate barracuda drives

    I got failures with WD many many times, IBMs, Maxtors are also on my black list heh, but after all I think what matters most is how lucky some is with this stuff;)

    regards
    nice blog, btw

    filip

  • http://www.MobileRead.com BobRussell

    Sorry to hear about your trials with Maxtor external drives. I just wish you had shared a little earlier before I bought three cheap ones myself!

    I had a different experience so far… had to return a WD drive because it was making quite but scary noises.

    I guess the bottom line is to always have everything backed up. It doubles your storage costs, but most of us use computers all the time to work with files we really need, or have invested a lot of time/money into. It will be nice when multiTB online backup and RAID solutions are cheap, and we don’t have to worry about storing and protecting our data so much.

  • http://www.geardiary.com Allen Hong

    In my experience, external hard drives seem to go bad because of not enough cooling. All the older Maxtor and Western Digital externals I have seen dont have power switches also. So if you leave the hard drive plugged in all the time, its running and heating up inside that enclosure. Heat is not good for the circuits and motor bearings… reduced life is the result. Newer externals have on/off switches and improved cooling heatsinks and some models even have cooling fans. But I think even with the improved heatsinks… the larger hard drives (250GB and bigger) I used at work still get really hot. Personally, I dont like to use external hard drives for anything except backups… when the backup is done… it gets disconnected and put back into its box.

  • http://www.magnusson.ca/blog.html Chris Magnusson

    I also use external harddrives exclusively for backups. And when the drive is not being used, I eject and unplug it, and turn it off, to prevent heat-induced premature failure. The one thing I’m worried about is that all the power bumps/drops from being turned on/off will induce an early death, either to the drive itself or to the electronics in the enclosure (I’m hoping the latter if it does happen).

  • http://www.magnusson.ca/blog.html Chris Magnusson

    Oh, and when choosing media for backups, I don’t recommend standardizing on one brand, just in case. ;)

  • http://www.geardiary.com Mitchell Oke

    Filip: Haha, the funny thing is IBM’s HDD department was bought by Hitachi in 2003 I think it was. I’m going to stick on the the Samsung 250GB IDE drives in the Maxtor case. Recently bought 3 of them for myself, and about 5 for some friends when I built their computers.

    BobRussell: Bummer! I have never bought WD drives before so I don’t have personal experience with them, but thats because I read something bad about them once. I have seriously thought of building a system purely for data storage and nothing else. 4 500GB drives in RAID 1 (mirrored) for 1TB of safe storage. Will share it with my dad if I do it, so will cost us about $450-500 each. Considering how much value we place on our data (and with my video editing projects for clients that I can’t afford to lose) it is worth it.

    Allen: My original Maxtor 160GB was the 5000DV and it didn’t have a power switch if I recall correctly, but the 7000DV drives that I have now do. Didn’t seem to help them much though :-(

    Allen/Chris: Yes my Maxtor’s did get quite warm quite quickly and that always worried me. The 160GB that just died was running quite often, but the 160GB that died several years ago and the 200GB that I have acting flakey now were only used on occasion then disconnected. The two 7000DV drives have a vent but no fan. Even a small fan would help drop the temps on these things.

    Chris: Good point about the DVD brands. I have had the best results with Verbatim discs with regards to failed burns (none I don’t think in over 200 discs) or flakey burns (only a couple I think). Those combined with the Pioneer DVR-111D (and updated 112D) have been good for me. I have also tried Imation and they are pretty good too.

  • http://www.clintonfitch.com Clinton Fitch

    I have to say that in my experience with hard disks, Maxtor rates as the worst. I’ve only had 3 of them but all three have failed without much warning and well before they should have in my opinion. Heck, I have a 120GB drive that has been in a couple of different PCs now for over 3 years and haven’t had an issue. Each of the Maxtors I had lasted maybe 24 months.

    I’m of the opinion… just avoid ‘em.

  • http://www.geardiary.com Mitchell Oke

    Then we are in complete agreement :)