Rating: 
Summary: Can't Count on It
Review: I gave up trying to rely on this drive. I've had the drive a little over a year so it's out of warranty. I didn't use it often, maybe just about 30 hours of usage. The drive started making a clicking noise and sometimes doesn't spin up and I can't access my data. For two weeks it didn't start then finally on one day, it spun up! I left the drive running for a few days with no problems and removed all the data. I scanned the disk for errors and reformatted without any problems. Good... so I shut it off and moved it to another computer and the $*)@&% thing won't spin up again. I give up. Maxtor support was really good but basically told me I was out of luck because of the warranty. They don't repair them but will send you out a new drive. Some advice... Keep the drive running all the time, if it's a hardware problem, it will fail within it's warranty.
Rating:
Summary: Unreliable and error-prone
Review: I had hoped this drive would provide cheap backup for a variety of files without the time and annoyance of cutting CDs or using other removable media. It has instead proven to be unreliable and unstable. I've lost data, had it freeze up my system, had it cause conflicts with other firewire devices, and had it corrupt files and/or misplace parts of the file structure. The drive has so many problems that I connect it only when absolutely necessary. The transfer speed is terrible, so much so that using a "find" utility to locate a file on the drive is unbearably long, always resulting in an error. It may seem like a lot of storage for little money, but what is the value if it consistently loses data and crashes your system? Pay a little more and get something more reliable, it will be worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Not reliable. Try some other brand.
Review: I have this drive and it has a lot of problems: 1. Not reliable. Sometimes it just don't wake up
and I can't access the data. 2. Some strange sound: sometimes it has a clock-like
"click" out of no where. It sounds like it try to
spin up the disc but fail again and again. 3. Error message pop up-- can't access the drive when
there is no clear reason to cause it. I am so sick of this drive I end up took it apart and
put the HHD inside my PC as internal. It works but the
speed is slow. So I pay more for a external HHD and it ends up as a
slow internal which should be much cheaper. When talking about HHD, RELIABILITY is everything.
A waste of money in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for MP3 Collections
Review: I like this external hard drive to use with my mp3 collection. I may end up buying another one for my digital photo collection. It is great because it is portable and affordable compared to other external hard drives on the market. It was easy to install and accessing the files was faster then accessing files on my internal hard drives, especially for music files. The only thing I do not like about the 1394 Maxtor External Harddrive is that it is on all the time. It generates alot of heat which I don't think is good for a hard drive. It has no on/off switch. You have to spin it down via a setting in your computer which is an extra step added to shutting down your computer. Hopefully Maxtor will come up with another idea to make turning off the external drive a bit easier. Transfering files from the internal drives to the Maxtor 1394 External Drive was alot faster then saving to another internal drive. Overall, I am satisfied with it and would consider buying another one mostly because of the price. Amazon.com saved me $65.oo and they offered the best price out there on this item. Thanks Julie
Rating: 
Summary: Freezes Up
Review: I purchased one of these drives to help me migrate from one computer to another and then to store digital video files for editing purposes. The problem is the drive freezes up from time to time. To get it working again requires a complete power down of the system and a reboot. This can be a real pain when you are working on a 90 minute MiniDV project.
Rating:
Summary: Slow Performer
Review: I purchased this drive to capture video, and after getting very poor results, ran a drive test routine from Pinnacle on the drive. Using a 100M file size, the average write is 2.46 MBytes/sec, minimum 1.4 MBytes/sec, and maximum was 9.6 MBytes/sec. Since this is well below the 3.6MBytes/sec sustained rate needed to support an uncompressed digital video capture,buy a different drive if you are thinking of using this for video.
Rating: 
Summary: Good product for the price
Review: I recently purchased the Maxtor FireWire 80 GB external hard drive to aid my work in recording concerts, I must confess that I should have done this earlier as this unit helped save me an extraordinary amount of time. The unit is quick and very easy to install. Because of the cost, or the inexpensive and yet rugged construction, I am in the process of purchasing additional units to link together for my work. A great unit, I highly recommend this to anyone who are in need of hard drive space for recordings, both audio and video.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent bargain
Review: I recently purchased this hard drive for use in music and video editing. I thought about purchasing the 40 MB Maxtor, however, my dealer only had the 80 MB. Because of the prize per MB, I decided to buy the 80. I couldn't be happier. This drive is easy to use and the transfer rate is quick and the drive is quite rugged and portable, just perfect for the mobility that I seek. This unit is quick, effective, and perfect for my use.
Rating:
Summary: Slow, noisy and almost useless.
Review: I'm going to return this drive as soon as possible. It took 45 minutes to copy 600 megabytes from a CD. My internal drives would do the same task in relatively no time. I've had to restart repeatedly and the drive makes intermittent hard "clock" sounds. It sounded too good to be true, and I guess it was. Maybe it's just a defective unit.
Rating:
Summary: Happy so far...
Review: I've had it for a week now. I connected it to my Thinkpad A21e laptop via firewire PC card. No problems with installation. Computer w/ win98SE recognized everything. Then I transferred a 700 meg movie file to the hard drive in about five minutes. The movie plays off the hard drive just like it was on my laptop internal drive. The drive is very quiet and I don't even notice whether it's accessing or not. In fact, my laptop makes more noise. This is a great buy for 80 gb of storage. The firewire makes it probably as fast as you want it to be. So far, so good. I recommend it highly.
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