SATA/150 - 7200 rpm - 8 MB Buffer - 3.5" - MPN: 7Y250M0
Strengths: Just like any other manufacturing types
Weakness: not reliable
Once you lose your data, you'll know how painful it is.
Consider the amount of time you back up the data, might as well just buy the seagate or other drive instead of Maxtor. This happened twice for me and I lost of my kids' beautiful pictures :-(
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TopStrengths: Quiet and fast
Weakness: Prone to failure
I have been using this harddisk primarily for storing video data for about a year. On and off, it gives clicking sounds which often lead to corrupted data on the disk. Every time this occurs, the harddisk will also slow down tremendously. Then the only way to get the harddisk back to its normal speed is to uninstall and reinstall the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller drivers.
There are 3 partitions on this harddisk. But for unknown reason, one of the partitions suddenly become inaccessable when the harddisk starts clicking again, causing me to lose valuable data. After using Partition Commander to recover the partition, I ran SeaTools'es Short Tests on the harddisk which it repeatedly failed.
Drawing from my experience, any one using this harddisk should not ignore the clicking sound should it develop or he/she is going to lose valuable data just like me.
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TopStrengths: High storage capacity, Maxtor quality and value, good price per gig ratio.
Weakness: Windows 2000 won't recognize SATA drives.
This is a good drive but Windows 2000 won't recognize SATA drives. It would be nice if drive manufactures like Maxtor would provide drivers to solve this problem; but Microsoft SHOULD provide drivers to support new technologies like SATA drives. I was able to test the drive using a beta version of Windows XP Pro 64 bit edition. But even here, Windows will NOT install on a SATA drive without a convoluted process.
Maxtor also has a nice website and, from past experience has a painless rma service. Costumer satisfaction seems to be on the top of there list - a very good considering any purchase.
It's a great drive for the price and the SATA interface provides easier installation than IDE.
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TopStrengths: Fast transfer speeds, Large storage capacity, Good warranty
Weakness: Operating system must be able to support larger capacity Hard Drives. System must have support for SATA interface.
The hard drive works well in a RAID 1 setup with a SATA compatible motherboard. The read access is quick and system backup is quick as well.
The transfer speeds are a good improvement over IDE hard drives with similar storage capacities.
The manufacturer warranty on this drive is 3 years which gives some assurance if anything happens within the warranty period.
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TopStrengths: very fast, very quiet
Weakness: none
I've always been a fan of Western Digital until I bought this hard drive. It's a lot more quieter than a WD Drive. Also, using Maxtor's SATA-150 technology, it allows me to transfer files at a much higher speed than ever before.
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TopStrengths: It gets a good hard drive for the money. 5 year warrentee is well worth it
Weakness: I've had bad experiences with Maxtor but thats when they had a 1 year warrentee
Great buy. I am a die hard Western Digital fan but for this price you cant beat it. I had a maxtor hard drive before but didnt have much luck with them but hopefully my luck will change for the better with a 5 year warrentee
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Not reliable
Strengths: High capacity, Fast access time.
Weakness: Poor reliability
I purchased 4 of these drives unfortunately from a dealer that took the 3 year warranty away and offered only 1 year. So far one failed in the first year and was replaced. Shortly after the first year another one failed. Now I have a third out of four that is starting to show the signs of the same type of failure coming up. These failures once they happen they are 100% inaccessible so the data is 100% lost. It starts with an occasional click noise and some write errors, then within a few days they start clicking and are rendered inoperable. Maxtor doesn't appear to want to do anything about it because the warranty was lifted. If I built any hardware that showed a failure rate of greater than 10% I would definitely take steps to prevent those numbers of ever reaching the light of day. The Maxtor customer service folks don't recognize the damage that can cause to a reputation and choose not to honor any warranty so I hope I can warn as many people as possible that this drive is trouble. Not only do I have a 75% complete failure rate with this drive, I'm left with 2 pieces of hazardous waste and much lost data to show for my purchase. Don't forget to back up your data often if you own one of these.
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