Rating: 
Summary: Great Product
Review: I bought this drive for my G3 Macintosh. Had it installed, initialized and had everything transfered from the original 4 GB drive in about 45 minutes. (Why Maxtor says you need a Windows clone is beyond me; the drive works perfectly with the Apple driver and doesn't have the limititation some early Windows versions have for paritiion sizes).The drive is quiet and fast. Everything I expected and more: the specs on the box looked like the specs for the ATA 100 model, even though it was supposed to be ATA 66. Sure enough, the drive inside the box is the "H" model -- the ATA 100 version. I am completely satisfied, and will probably buy a second as a slave drive eventually.
Rating:
Summary: Easy-to-Install Major Speed Boost
Review: All I can say is this: The computer literacy of those who have negatively reviewed this drive, due to their having had difficulty with either its installation or use, must be about equal to their ability to manipulate the English language, i.e. little to none. Actually, that's not entirely fair. I suspect that the reason these people had trouble was because they were "real men," and were not about to lower themselves to reading the directions that are included in the box. Seeing themselves as computer "experts," they clearly believe that any problems they experience must be the fault of the hardware or software -- After all, as experts, they could not possibly be the weak link in the chain, right? Well, I have recently installed this drive and, although I was initially daunted by the prospect of ripping the heart out of my computer (especially having read some of the negative reviews), the installation process went smoothly and without incident. The directions are clear, detailed, well-written, and easy to understand. If you just follow the directions, installation should be a breeze (unless, of course, there are other hardware issues with your computer that might adversely affect the installation process). The software included with the drive performs exactly as described in the instructions; it did an absolutely terrific job imaging my old hard drive and copying the information to the new one. Being that I upgraded from a 4500rpm drive, the 7200rpm of this Maxtor drive effectively doubled the speed of my computer. People focus way too much on processor speed and amount of RAM; the processor and RAM only matter after the data has been retrieved from the hard drive. If your hard drive is slow, a fast processor and unlimited RAM will be bottlenecked by the access speed of the drive and rendered ineffectual. It's like a world-class sprinter trying to run in shackles -- It just doesn't work! The drive is quick, quiet, and a joy to work with. I split it into two partitions (an option during the install the installation process), so that I can archive data on the second drive. One 40Gb drive is great; two 20Gb drives is even better! I recommend this drive. However, installation of a hard drive, even one with documentation as thorough as that included with this drive, is a big job and has a lot of room for error. I do not suggest that a beginner make this his first attempt at an upgrade to his computer. However, for someone like me, who has done some upgrades "inside the box" (RAM, modems, EtherNet cards, and the like), this is a great project and a terrific way to bring new life to an old machine. PS: My computer is an HP with a 333Mhz Celeron CPU, 160Mb of RAM, and (now!) 45Gb of hard drive space (I re-installed the old drive as slave, as per the instructions that came with the new drive -- waste not, want not!).
Rating: 
Summary: A LOT OF ROOM!
Review: WOW... I couldn't ask for more room on my hard drive. It is fast, and it has a lot of room. The installation was kind of difficult to understand.. just READ the instructions carefully and you should have no problem.
Rating:
Summary: Maxtor's Mixed Reputation
Review: I've talked to a number of people about Maxtor drives, and quite a few have told me to avoid them like the plague. I furrow my brow questioningly at these people because my experience has been quite the contrary. Over the years I have purchased and installed several Maxtor hard drives and have had few problems with them. I have an old Pentium 166 at home that has a Maxtor drive in it, and it's been running solid now for several years. I've only purchased one Maxtor drive that gave me trouble, and it was a bare drive I purchased at a computer show from a less-than-reputable vendor because of the low price. When I discovered that the drive was bad, Maxtor held up its end of the bargain quite nicely. I phoned them about the bad drive, they told me to ship it to them and that they'd ship a new drive to me simultaneously. They took my credit card number in case I tried to stiff them but did not charge the card. I got my new drive in a couple of days and it worked great. In fact, I still have it. For novice upgraders, the MaxBlast software makes it a snap to format the drive. Essentially, all you have to do is plug the drive in, insert the MaxBlast disk and then install whatever software you want on the drive after its formatted. If you need information on any of their drives, it's easily accessible on their Web site, along with any software you may need. For example, if you purchase an OEM bare drive, you can download the MaxBlast software from their Web site. In spite of all the bad reviews Maxtor seems to get, I have to say that I like their drives. They work fine for me. And when you look at Maxtor from a bang-for-your-buck standpoint, I think they stand above the rest of the hard drive crowd because you can get more storage for your money and, depending on the drive, more performance too. I give Maxtor my stamp of approval.
Rating:
Summary: Ok - I'll fix this problem
Review: Here is the deal -- Maxtor drives are...(drum roll)...pretty good. I would say they are a mid-market product. The price is pretty decent, the technology is there, and the drive sizes are there. You could drop a small house payment on a high end array of hard-drives...but to be honest, I have never had a problem with a Maxtor. Are they louder...I don't know I really don't set up on the decible meter. How do they benchmark? Who knows -- benchmarking is the digital equivalent of horse handicapping. Generally it is right on the money, but who ever is doing the benchmarking can skew the results the way they want. And every once in the while that long-shot old mare comes in at 50 to 1 and all the other horses forgot to take their steroids that day. Did you ever notice a company that puts up a benchmark where their product isn't number one? Hmmm... Did a magazine ever put a product benchmark where the top five didn't have an advertisement in the magazine? Am I cynical, yes...but you get my point. Now the big one. Do they break or are prone to errors. No more than any other drive that I used be it low-end or high-end or just right. Isn't that why they tell you to backup everything anyway? Or is it like that tag on the mattress -- people just get a thrill by living dangerously and ripping it off?
Rating: 
Summary: A huge disappointment.
Review: Unfortunately, I have to agree with the reviewer who recommended avoiding Maxtor products. I recently purchased a new computer which had a Maxtor hard disk drive, and after less than a month, it quit working. All Maxtor will do is ship me a new drive after I return the old one, expecting me to be able to handle the installing/uninstalling myself, and I'm a complete moron when it comes to computers. It doesn't seem to me that Maxtor offers any customer support whatsoever for those of us who aren't computer geniuses. Did I mention that they also want me to pay for the shipping and handling to replace their defective product? I'll never buy from Maxtor again.
Rating: 
Summary: Avoid Maxtor
Review: I have owned several Maxtor drives over the years, and they are definitely the worst of the bunch. They have all been louder and have benchmarked slower than my other drive. These are also the only drives I've ever had die. I've owned many drives from Western Digital, Seagate, Fujitsu, Quantum, and IBM. ALL of them perfectly, including my ancient 80 MB Seagate drives. Out of 5 Maxtor drives, however, only 2 still work. My last Maxtor lasted less than a year. For speed, I recommend a new Seagate or IBM drive. Western Digital and Fujitsu are very quiet and give good performance. Maxtor drives may be cheaper, but they will cost a lot more when you have to replace a dead drive.
Rating:
Summary: More then meets the eye...
Review: I present have a Maxtor 20GB HDD and a Seagate 20GB as well in one system. I dual boot WinMe and Win2kServer. The drives I have spin at 5400RPM which is pretty fast. But the Seagate is noticeably faster and is much quieter. All the Maxtor I have had are very noisy. I have tested this drive as well and it is considerably faster at 7200RPM's but it is still pretty noisy. When running program like Defrag or Diskeeper, the process is much faster because of the faster read/write speed of the drive. This is much needed especially for those who don't defrag regularly. 40 GIG should give you more space then u'll need fpr a while. Now i'll have space for full CD's for burning later. If you need more space this is it. Plenty of space to run multiple OS's. Plenty of room for those space hogging games like Descent. Get while they last!
Rating:
Summary: More than it's worth!
Review: Right now if u buy the 40GB maxtor drive u might be in luck! Maybe because of a promo, the drives are now all 45GB and go at ATA100!! that's 5 more GB at ata100 for the same price! I tried to install the hd onto my 2 year old computer but I guess my computer was too old.. but hey time to get a new computer! this HD rocks!!
Rating:
Summary: Great Product!
Review: I wasn't sure whether or not to get a Maxtor drive, partially because I only have experience with Western Digital. Well, Maxtor ranks right up there with Seagate and Western Digital. it's a fast, large drive and the price is right! I'd recommend it to anyone!
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