Rating: 
Summary: Not bad
Review: My only complaint is that it runs quite hot. Don't sandwich it in between other drives and it should be fine, though.Also, it doesn't come with mounting brackets, yet the editorial says it does.
Rating: 
Summary: Very easy, very fast, very nice!
Review: My PC had a spare bay, cable connection and power supply. It runs Windows XP. It took 5 minutes to install, and 5 minutes to format for additional storage. I was saving MP3s within 15 minutes of receiving this drive. Another reviewer mentioned the software that comes with this drive does not work with XP. I had no such problem.
This drive is HIGHLY recommended!
Rating:
Summary: comp. bet. WD 40 GB vs. Maxtor 120GB
Review: Newly Installed Maxtor 120 GB
pro: cheap, full kit
con: heavy spinning noisy same 7200 RPM
Rating: 
Summary: Returned to Maxtor after 40 days of use
Review: The drive was well packaged and with a reasonable price, given the capacity I got. I used partitionmagic when I upgraded my windows 2000 to this new drive. It runs smoothly and without much noice. The problem I encountered was that after 40 days of use, it suddenly failed to be recognized by the operating system, as if the hard drive had been disconnected from the computer. If I switch the computer off and turn it back on again, it may work again but it may fail after a few munites of running. I finally returned it to Maxtor because it was still within the warranty period. I just hope this is not a design flaw.
Rating:
Summary: Your basic hard drive
Review: There is nothing spectacular about this drive, but nothing particularly bad either. The software they provide does not work correctly with Windows XP, but aside from that it's a good drive to get if you need to upgrade your existing system. Speed - It's not going to set any records, but it's not slow either. It seems to fall in the middle of the pack for performance benchmarks according to the various websites that have evaluated this product. Noise - Again, it's not the quietest drive on the market. In fact I've seen other models of Maxtor drives that were practically noise-free. This one you can hear slight chattering as it accesses the data, but I can barely hear it above the noise of the various cooling fans in my PC. In short, you would need to have supersonic hearing to be upset by the noise this one makes, but there are quieter drives out there. Heat - Once again, it's in the middle of the road. Most of the drives out today are generating a lot more heat than the older drives. The reputable hardware testing sites I've checked put this in the middle of the pack. If you have a standard computer case and multiple hard drives, most likely there is very little space between them. I would recommend getting a quality ball bearing cooling fan for this and any drive if you want to extend its life, but if you're installing it in a cramped space with little airflow, then a cooling fan is a necessity due to the heat it generates. Quite frankly, most of today's drives are quick enough and quiet enough that, with the exception of a few performance models, it's hard to tell any difference between them unless you're a serious computer gearhead. The only areas left to compete are in reliability, customer service, and software. I haven't had to deal with their customer service, and obviously I can't rate the reliability of this new purchase, but I can comment on the software. The drive comes with Maxtor's MaxBlast hard drive cloning and utility software. This is the one area that they could've beat the competition and given me a reason to bump it up to four stars. Unfortunately, this software proved to be so much a disappointment that I'd recommend you do not use it. (In fact, it's so bad I should probably should bump this down to two stars.) Right off the bat I knew I was in trouble as I have a separate Promise UDMA controller built into my ASUS A7V motherboard. MaxBlast couldn't detect it and simply crashed every time I tried booting it in DOS mode. DOS mode is the preferred and generally less error prone method of cloning an existing hard drive, but since I couldn't get it to work that way I attempted cloning my drive running MaxBlast from Windows XP. First off, it took over two hours to copy a 40GB drive over to this one (why?) Secondly, MaxBlast gives you options to set your partitions when you're formatting from scratch, but it didn't give me any options to set my partitions when I cloned my existing drive. It forces you to accept one partition that's the same size as your old drive, then creates a second partition for the remaining space. Not what I wanted. Finally, I would've accepted the previous two annoyances if it would've copied XP correctly. It did copy XP and I can boot up, but since the transfer I have run into all kinds of problems with Explorer crashing frequently, the system restore function no longer working, and other annoyances. Add that I've had to reregister some of my existing programs and it's apparent this is definitely not a clone of my old drive. So there you go. Like the review title says, it's your basic hard drive with about the same specs as other drives out there. If the price is right and you just need extra storage space, it's worth buying. However, if you need to transfer data from an existing drive, plan on paying extra for some cloning software that actually works. Hope the review helped.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: With drive technology today, it is hard to go wrong with this drive. Fast, cached and everything. Well worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Beware the Maxtor software
Review: Wow. Maxtor is terrible. Following all of their instructions to the letter, I attempted to copy my Win2K SP4.0 system disk (20GB) onto this newer, larger drive. The first attempt took 2 hours and failed at 95% completion. When I attempted to perform the copy from within Win2K, it took another 2+ hours to complete. Everything appeared fine until I attempted to boot off the new drive. NOTHING.
Yes...NOTHING. No recognized boot volume.
WORSE YET...my original system disk was totally corrupted. My recently made repair disk failed. For every fixed file, there was another one waiting. After several nights of trying every trick possible (including analyzing the system on another win2K machine), I have given up.
The drive itself works...so maxtor gets a 1 star. But their software violated the PRIME DIRECTIVE: DO NO HARM. I have written to Maxtor several times. Eventually, a human responded and said "The warranty says we are not responsible for any incidental or direct data loss". TRANSLATION: MAXTOR does not care what happens when you use their software!!!! Not only did they cost me >24 hours of my LIFE, they refuse to compensate me in any way for their faulty software that corrupted my original (perfectly fine) system disk!
Well, if they don't care how messed up your data is going to get, why would I care to buy their products in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy Western Digital Instead!
Review: Yes, it is a moderately big drive. Yes, it works. And yes, I got it on sale for a few bucks less than usual. BUT this drive draws a huge amount of power and runs hot. After install, I immediately noted that the drive was running far hotter "to touch" than any of the dozens of drives I have owned. It was also more noisy than my other recent drives.
The embedded SMART diagnostics on a drive allow monitoring of drive performance -- this feature is included on all modern drives. (Download the free utility HDD Health to monitor your drives, you can find it with Google). Checking the drive temp using SMART, I discover this drive is on average running at 40 to 45 degrees C. Critical temp where a drive has high probability of failure is 50C. Most drives run at 35C to 40C. Performing a disk defragmentation (where the disk is very actively at work), this drive exceeds 50C every time -- and sets off a critical warning on my SMART drive monitoring software!! By comparison, my recently installed Western Digital 250G drive runs at 38C, is quieter, and draws one-third the power on average.
Maxtor drives work, of course, and I have owned several. But the Western Digital drives, particularly the "Special Edition" versions with a three year warrantee, are more dependable, quieter, and cooler-running. You can pick up a bare WD 250GB drive for $145 -- I just bought one to replace this unit.
Whatever drive you get, remember to backup! The best solution is Norton Ghost. Install two drives, then make Norton Ghost images of your system drive to your second "backup" drive on a regular basis (at least monthly, and after any major software installs). Next, setup your Windows XP Backup utility to make daily backups of your "My Documents" folder to your second drive. With this approach if (or when) the system drive dies, you can be up and running again very quickly -- just restore the drive image to a new drive using Ghost, then restore your most recent Documents backup using System Backup. No new installs required. Nothing lost.
Rating:
Summary: Maxtor is o.k. if...
Review: You don't use the drive for your operating system, backups or storing data. They make wonderful paperweights, but that is about it. The installation software is easy, if you don't have a problem with it and it doesn't trash your system. If you have trouble with the drive, don't worry. Maxtor will offer every kind of excuse possible, tech support is not helpful, and customer service needs to be renamed. Customer contempt, perhaps. Maybe customer disservice. Shop for a better drive and a better company.
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