How Reliable are the Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500?

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Bluemouse

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Hey all,

These Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500's are selling for a dirt cheap $150 Canadian, but I was wondering if I should go for it or not. Maxtor used to have a lot of problems, but Im not sure about this line. Isn't Maxtor bought by Seagate now?

Thanks :)
 
Every single hard drive you buy is a crap shoot... So get whatever you want. I've seen hundreds of failed hard drives from every manufacturer and model you can imagine... It happens to all of them and it is just luck of the draw.
 
Yea, but which manufacturer has more bad drives? :)

Should I pay the 150 for this 500gb drive? or would it better to go for a more expensive one (by like 70 bux)?
 
Yea, 5 years manufacturer, 90 days direct replacement. It's more that i dont want it to crash and destroy all my data ;)
 
1/2 a TB seems extremely cheap for that price! Buy 2 and run nightly data back-ups from one to the other :grinthumb
 
Money doesn't necessarily buy you a non-crash guarantee, the more expensive HDD has about as much chance of dying as the cheaper one. Maxtor doesn't make HDD's to crash or sell them cheaper because they have more chance of dying. Buy one ... for that price I'd buy 2! :grinthumb
 
It isn't by price as much as reputation. Maxtor generally has a lot more HDD crashes than other brands, from what i've heard.
 
Yes, that's from what you heard. Maxtor is trusted by many computer companies, as is other brands that Rick suggested. They would not build and sell a hard drive if it were to constantly encounter problems. Good luck :D !
 
Toshiba is trusted by companies too, but I sure as hell wouldn't buy a toshiba :) And they wouldn't build a hard drive specifically to break, but they could cut a few corners here or there, or have lax quality control measures.
 
What is wrong with Toshiba's?? I have a Toshiba laptop and it's a work-horse! Best laptop I've ever had ... and I'm on my 4th!
I like them (and my company does too) due to reliability.
 
mikescorpio81 said:
What is wrong with Toshiba's?? I have a Toshiba laptop and it's a work-horse! Best laptop I've ever had ... and I'm on my 4th!
I like them (and my company does too) due to reliability.


Yea, I have a friend who is on his 4th as well, then another two people who are on their third, and I myself am on my second. Did I mention that it was because the first X laptops broke within 1-2 years? :) Specifically the 1-3 year old satellite models are trash. In my university classes, almost every single person who purchased a toshiba laptop had some sort of hardware issue with them, whether it be the fan, hard drive, graphics card or motherboard. Both my sister and myself have identical laptop models, and we both ran into motherboard screwups. She got her motherboard replaced, and the replacement motherboard had a crack in it as well.
 
Unfortunately, your experiences don't indicate that Toshiba is any worse than any other brand. I can't tell you how many Compaqs I've seen for example... But Compaq is also one of the best selling laptops. Under my best guess, I've serviced (literally) several hundred laptops. Out of the ones with hardware issues, I've come to the conclusion there's no good brand.

Sony, Toshiba, IBM, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Fujitsu, Dell.... I've seen different models from them all with many bad system boards and other internal hardware problems.

I admit that see some more, but its often the bigger brands such as Dell and HP... Of course I am going to see more of these because these are the best selling laptops. That means there's going to be more of these out there to break and end up on my bench at the end of the day.

I've seen my share of Toshibas as well, but nothing really sticks out as unusual. The numbers the problems I've seen have been nothing but ordinary.
Maxtor generally has a lot more HDD crashes than other brands, from what i've heard.
After Maxtor's merger with Quantum, they became the largest drive manufacturer in the world. So much like I see more Dells and HPs than other laptops, it makes sense that people see more Maxtors than any other product.

The bottom line is if you search any name brand for reviews, you're going to find a ton of complaints. You go to any forum and you'll see all these random recommendations, "Western Digital is the best!" and "Seagate roX0rz!", but the reason you see so many different companies recommended is because no one really knows.

Unfortunately, drive manufacturer's are sheepish about publishing their AFR (Annual failure rate) which would be the only real, factual way to end this debate. I'm willing to bet, for consumer desktop drives, they are all about the same.

And just to throw it in, here's an article from Google outlining some research regarding drive failure rates: http://216.239.37.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf
 
Thanks for the info :) Your probably right (and I did buy the drive btw) but just going by general information I have heard about far more people buying maxtor's and having then crap out on them then say Seagate or WD. What I mean by this is that the percentage of people who have bought maxtor drives and had them die on them is greater than the percentage from others, regardless of how many there are. Again, I am just going by what I have heard from a bunch of my friends/coworkers, but this seems to be the consensus. Now, those failure rates may only be for certain models, and I heard that this one was actually pretty decent, but that is why I asked here in the first place :)

I agree that no one really knows though, and in general you are most definitely correct.
 
I would buy one of their warantee's then (it's still cheaper than any other 1/2Tb drive w/warantee :) ). It costs, usually, under $30.
 
It comes with a limited 5 year warranty, and a 90 day direct replacement warranty from the retailer. I just don't want to lose all my data/go through the hassle of having to copy it to another disk, wait for an RMA and then recopy it back again.
 
Worried about your data? Back-Up :)

At that price, 2x HDD's would be a smart purchase, and you could run back-ups to the 2nd HDD.

I have over 400GB data and once a week I back it up to an external USB HDD. Just like you, I don't want to go through the hassle of losing all my data ... i'd simply breakdown!
 
You could also buy another and run it as a Raid 0 and have two identical hard drives :). Hopefully nothing will happen.
 
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