Rating: 
Summary: One of the Best Hard Drives On The Market Today
Review: The Maxtor DiamondMaxx 40 Gigabyte hard-drive is, quite simply, one of the best hard-drives I have ever seen in my life. While I've seen faster and better drives, none are as affordable dollar-for-gigabyte, and all have some inherent flaw(s) which make them unsuitable for data backup and recovery. The DiamondMaxx is a very stable hard-drive, able to survive all kinds of temperature extremes (though it is not recommended that you test this theory). I have purchased them for many different clients, and all agree that this drive is the workhorse of their companies. I, myself, am using one of these drives in the computer I am writing this review from.
Bottom line: if you want dependablility and overall good performance in your hard-drive(s), than look no further than the DiamondMaxx 40 GB hard drive.
Rating:
Summary: Maxtor ST0154000U 40 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Review: I recently purchased this drive. It seems it has brought new life to my 333MHz machine so much so that I will be able to use this for quite a bit longer than I thought. In conjunction with a memory upgrade (96MB to 128MB) and upgrade to Windows/ME it has essentially more that "doubled" the speed and capacity of my old machine which was becoming a bit of a clunker.The drive looks identical in size and configuration to the previous two Maxtor drives I have purchased so the compatibility makes for a simple and easy install. Maybe one day they will develop a "smart jumper" for the master/slave decision and configuration but this is a small price and easy step to install the drive. I installed it as a slave to do a format and copy, then as a master. A Windows install from the CD completed the migration and I was back in business in no time. I am not real fond of the Maxblast software but for some this is probably a necessity. I had to upgrade my BIOS which took a bit of research and time but once done made the install a straighforward process. The 7200 RPM drive is a considerable improvement over the older 5400 RPM drives and I believe the access time of around 9ms is pretty good for drives using the EIDE technology. The drive is quieter too. The upgrade from 4.3MB to 40MB is huge. I thought I would never fill the older one, but did. Of course I am saying the same thing about the 40MB but with the need to save more images and perhaps even motion and sound clips I suspect I will eventually need more in the future. The cost of this unit make upgrades downright affordable as well as easy. My other two Maxtor drives performed flawlessly so I am expect the same quality for this one. I rate Maxtor (for compatibility and quality from my old drives) and this drive tops (for cost and performance); 5 well-deserved stars.
Rating: 
Summary: This drive might have a motor reliability problem
Review: I own two such drives. Both failed in less then two years, one completely, the second one still works if mounted "upside down" (otherwise the motor cannot start). I think there are some motor reliability problem with this particular drive and it is more common that one can assume from the posts or WEB research. May be similar to IBM's problems, but I may just have a bad luck. I also own 4 I Western Digital drives with 8MB cache and they all are still alive. Again this might be a coincidence , but please be careful before buying this drive, especially as a replacement.
Rating:
Summary: Solid, stable and very cost-effective
Review: Like some of the other reviewers, I have owned a number of drives by a number of manufacturers. Maxtor is the only brand I have NEVER had crash on me. That's not to say that the other brands are not good, but I have been unable to beat Maxtor's quality/price ratio with any other drive. ALL hard drives will crash eventually, and when one does, the loss is usually so great as to turn one away from that manufacturer altogether, which is probably not totally fair, but understandable. Benchmarks are, for the most part, meaningless because only some benchmarking software is going to be able to really tell the difference in a few thousandths of a second of access time. I mean really, is it worth spending an extra $100 just so your database file loads two seconds faster? Unless you're blessed to have money to burn, I'd doubt it. The main features to look for are stability (resistance to crashing), capacity and general, practical performance. I use only Maxtor drives because for me, I get the best of all these for the best price. Since, as I said ALL drives crash eventually, I do make sure I keep valuable data backed up just in case, and since I don't use pirated software, I have all my original disks. It's a hassle to reinstall everything, but it's better than not being able to. In all my years, Maxtor has been the least crash-prone drive I know of, and that's why I recommend them highly. Besides, they have a 3-year warranty (like most others), so if one should crash, they'll replace it promptly (I assume). If you'd like more detailed information, check out Maxtor's website. Lot's of eye-opening information can be found there, some of which is not mentioned here or on the product box. Believe me, it's worth it to take a look
Rating:
Summary: Installed easily on my System
Review: I worked in PC Support for three years, and I still work on my own computers. I've installed/replaced a lot of drives. I think that the older your system, the greater is the chance that you'll have a problem installing this, or any other large drive. I installed this 40GB Maxtor drive in about 30 minutes, in a 4 year-old Dell 450 PII, running Windows 2000 Pro. That included going to Dell and downloading a BIOS upgrade and installing it. I recommend your having the most current BIOS version you can find for your PC, before you try to install your drive. As you can see - if you read all 40 or so reviews here - there are many variables in drive installation that can cause you to have a bad experience. Better to pay someone a few bucks to have it done, than to beat yourself (and Maxtor or whomever) up with it. As for the drive itself, it works great. It's pretty quiet - quieter than the 5400 rpm 8.5GB Maxtor that is OEM for the PC. It's faster than the PC's motherboard. The data transfer rate is stated on the box as 133MB/sec, though Amazon specs it as 66MB. Durable? We'll see.... I work with on the order of 500 workstations/servers in my organization, and we rarely have a hard drive crash, regardless of brand. Just assume that they all will crash (eventually they will), and back up your data. I'm happy that I bought this drive. Seems like a good value to me.
Rating:
Summary: This drive might have a motor reliability problem
Review: I own two such drives. Both failed in less then two years, one completely, the second one still works if mounted "upside down" (otherwise the motor cannot start). I think there are some motor reliability problem with this particular drive and it is more common that one can assume from the posts or WEB research (search Google for "Maxtor Double Beep Problem"). I also own 4 I Western Digital drives with 8MB cache and they all are still alive. Again this might be a coincidence , but please be careful before buying this drive, especially as a replacement.
Rating:
Summary: Complete waste of time and money
Review: Based on the "good reputation" of Maxtor hard drives, I bought one of these when my IBM "Deathstar" failed. That turned out to be a really bad choice... I thought the IBM's 2 year service life was bad, this "wonderful" Maxtor lasted about 6 weeks before having motor problems and it failed completely 2 weeks after that. Since I don't have an extra room in my apartment to store boxes for all of my electronic items, I threw away the original packaging (Maxtor requires this for returning the defective unit), so, I guess I now have a 90 dollar, two-month-old, paper weight. I replaced it with a Seagate Barracuda and, the jury is still out, but at least I won't have to worry about warranty coverage. The warranty on the Seagate drive stipulates that subjecting the drive to more than 350 G's will void the warranty, so, as long as I don't take it apart or throw it in front of a speeding bus, I should be covered. DON'T BUY A MAXTOR!!! Unless you enjoy throwing your money away.
Rating:
Summary: EZ install for a non-techie
Review: I had the hard drive 30 MB go south on an old machine my daughter was using for High School work. Wanted a small drive because the old processor didn't merit much of an upgrade. I never had attempted this before and after research on the WEB and talking with some friends decided to take the plunge. This MAXTOR was one of the smallest at the best price I could find. I was surprized by the CLEAR, STRAIGHTFORWARD instructions included in the box. I'll recommend all Maxtor HDs. This one works super. Now I'm considering more memory...
Rating:
Summary: Maxtor is French for "miserable"
Review: !!!!BUY A MAXTOR AT YOUR OWN PERIL!!! I have a Dell 1Gig, 512 machine, with the Maxtor 40G hard-drive as part of the initial build. Less than two weeks after my machine came off Warranty, the drive failed, completely and utterly. In breaking down my box, I found that the warranty was marked on the outside of the HD as "aug 03" (it's presently jul 03). So I called Maxtor. They claimed the HD warranty ended in May 03. The rep asked me to "send proof", which after some further discussion was a fax sent to Maxtor (which I had to send 3 times). After getting Maxtor support to help for about 15 minutes, they suddenly said, "this drive was OEM'd by Dell and as such you have to deal with them." When I pointed out that the warranty was still good according to the HD, I was handed around and eventually told, "tough luck". I'm going to try my luck with Western Digital.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent upgrade at a good price
Review: After living with a tiny 4.0 Gig drive for several years I saw this drive on special. I snatched it up and have not had a problem with drive space since. The drive installation is simple and fairly easy, but you do need to have some understanding of the guts of your computer. After plugging in the power and drive cables and closing up the case, within ten mintues I was back up and running with more space than I knew what to do with. Since I am using this on a Mac I cannot comment on the included software. Speed wise, the drive blows away my old 4 gig. Faster access and startup is always a good thing for any computer If you have a older computer, this is a great upgrade for it. Sure compared to newer drives the capacity is somewhat small. But most people really don't need hundreds of Gigs for normal use.
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