Drive was slow to open, and got the "click of death" after 13 months. Maxtor only warrenties for 6 months. Seems they know something you should know!

This hard drive has some serious serious issues.

First of all, it's absurdly loud. I own two Western Digital drives and they're barely audible. The intermittent clicking and grinding sounds from this drive, however, ruin the music I listen to and the movies I watch on my computer. I can't stand it. Whoever said this drive was silent needs to have his/her ears checked.

Second of all, this drive has some SERIOUS compatibility issues. In my new computer (Biostar iDeq Athlon 2500+) it would not work unless I set the jumpers to "slave". Otherwise the computer would hang when I booted it up (a DMI problem, the computer said). In my old computer, an Alienware Athlon 1400+, things were even worse. Files would mysteriously disappear and partitions would randomly un-format themselves. The problems would not go away after a BIOS update. These problems are not unique; I searched the web and Maxtor is well-known for having serious serious DMI issues like the ones I suffered.

I don't know what oddballs would recommend this drive over a Western Digital or Seagate. I bought it because the price was right; I now see it was worth the extra $30 or so to buy a drive from a brand I trust. Don't go with Maxtor.

We have a computing cluster with 700 Maxtor 160 and 200 Gb drives installed.

The drives do not have a bad failure rate (about 5% per year), but when drives are returned under warranty to Maxtor, the replacement "refurbished" drives have a nearly 50% immediate failure rate. There seems to be no quality control on their refurbishment system at all.

I recommend Seagate drives if you don't want headaches.

Was concerned with the specs listing a drive that would not fit my computer. Did some checking and this unit is a standard 3.5 inch wide drive. So bought it. Installation was quick and easy to do. Necessary to point out that one does need to first verify what is in their unit, by using information from Systems / Device. Match the drive you need to the drive interface that is in you unit to avoid problems.

I've owned this drive for many months and it has performed flawlessly. It (like other large & fast drives) gets pretty warm after running for a while. If you just make sure your case is well ventillated you shouldn't have any problems.

I've built many systems with many different hard drives and have only had a couple fail. They weren't Maxtor, but it just as easily could have been. If you value your data, either back it up, or go with a RAID system. Failures can and do happen, no matter what brand of drive you buy.

As far as the whiners that gave this drive poor marks, what can I say? Looks like instead of rating it on the merits of the drive itself, they took out they frustration because of either poor marketing, or an obvious case of not reading their own system manual before making the purchase.

Make no mistake. This is an great drive (for PCs built in this century) and when on sale, offers ample room for drive hogging chores, such as video editing and archiving. I highly recommend it.