Rating: 
Summary: Always been satified with Maxtor
Review: And this one is no different. I had purchased a 160GB Samsung to start building my new PC. I took this drive home only to find that their partitioning software that you have to download from their website did not even work. Instead of searching the internet for third party software to do this, I took the drive back to the store and got the 200GB Maxtor instead. Installation was simple, I just popped it into my PC and it was recognized immediately. I installed the Max Blast software and the drive was partitioned, formatted and ready to use in less than 5 minutes. NOTE: Your registry has to be modified to be able to recognize drives larger than 137 MB, but the Maxtor software does this for you.
I will always buy Maxtor from now on; great products with no BS.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning: What you see is NOT what you get!
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS ITEM IF YOU EXPECT TO GET THE ATA/133 CARD WITH IT! Tech specs at Amazon.com for this Maxtor L01P200 7200 RPM 200 GB Hard Drive specifically state that it comes with a "Maxtor Ultra ATA/133 card for Windows". That was my sole reason for buying this particular 200 GB hard drive instead of any other. I clicked the button at Amazon.com to purchase from J&R Music & Computer World since theirs was the primary "Add to Shopping Cart" button for this hard drive. Since it was to be a Christmas gift, I also paid for expedited shipping. That was on Dec. 8, 2003. It finally arrived January 13, 2004 - so much for the "expedited" estimated delivery date of Dec. 11-16 -- and so much for Christmas! The Maxtor box that finally arrived from J&R looked exactly like the one in the Amazon picture. It even had the same item number on a sticker on the box: L01P200. However there was no ATA/133 card. I called J&R and their customer service rep was confused, agreeing that their product is advertised as having an ATA/133 card in the box, but that theirs don't have the card in the box. However J&R agreed to put in a parts order and ship me the card since it was advertised as being included. (By the way they also stated they would refund my shipping since I paid for expedited and it took 5 weeks to arrive.) A few days later I received a phone call from J&R stating that they changed their minds, they would NOT ship the part since theirs didn't usually come with it anyway. Then they apparently decided to think it over a bit and said they would call me back. They never did. I called today to check on the ATA/133 status and was firmly told that the issue was closed; they will not ship the card and the most they can do is issue a $15.00 refund (and no shipping refund either). So I paid $211.63 (including shipping) to J&R Music & Computers through Amazon.com for a hard drive missing the advertised but required ATA/133 card, which took 5 weeks to get in the first place. Now I will have to pay at least an extra $40 (plus shipping) to buy the necessary ATA/133 card separately. Even with the "$15.00" refund this turns out to be a very expensive hard drive. All I can say is this: Never again will I purchase anything computer-related here again. I'm going back to Pricewatch from now on. At least with the merchants there you get what you order, and have real recourse if you don't.
Rating:
Summary: Warning: What you see is NOT what you get!
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS ITEM IF YOU EXPECT TO GET THE ATA/133 CARD WITH IT! Tech specs at Amazon.com for this Maxtor L01P200 7200 RPM 200 GB Hard Drive specifically state that it comes with a "Maxtor Ultra ATA/133 card for Windows". That was my sole reason for buying this particular 200 GB hard drive instead of any other. I clicked the button at Amazon.com to purchase from J&R Music & Computer World since theirs was the primary "Add to Shopping Cart" button for this hard drive. Since it was to be a Christmas gift, I also paid for expedited shipping. That was on Dec. 8, 2003. It finally arrived January 13, 2004 - so much for the "expedited" estimated delivery date of Dec. 11-16 -- and so much for Christmas! The Maxtor box that finally arrived from J&R looked exactly like the one in the Amazon picture. It even had the same item number on a sticker on the box: L01P200. However there was no ATA/133 card. I called J&R and their customer service rep was confused, agreeing that their product is advertised as having an ATA/133 card in the box, but that theirs don't have the card in the box. However J&R agreed to put in a parts order and ship me the card since it was advertised as being included. (By the way they also stated they would refund my shipping since I paid for expedited and it took 5 weeks to arrive.) A few days later I received a phone call from J&R stating that they changed their minds, they would NOT ship the part since theirs didn't usually come with it anyway. Then they apparently decided to think it over a bit and said they would call me back. They never did. I called today to check on the ATA/133 status and was firmly told that the issue was closed; they will not ship the card and the most they can do is issue a $15.00 refund (and no shipping refund either). So I paid $211.63 (including shipping) to J&R Music & Computers through Amazon.com for a hard drive missing the advertised but required ATA/133 card, which took 5 weeks to get in the first place. Now I will have to pay at least an extra $40 (plus shipping) to buy the necessary ATA/133 card separately. Even with the "$15.00" refund this turns out to be a very expensive hard drive. All I can say is this: Never again will I purchase anything computer-related here again. I'm going back to Pricewatch from now on. At least with the merchants there you get what you order, and have real recourse if you don't.
Rating:
Summary: Warning: What you see is NOT what you get!
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS ITEM IF YOU EXPECT TO GET THE ATA/133 CARD WITH IT! Tech specs at Amazon.com for this Maxtor L01P200 7200 RPM 200 GB Hard Drive specifically state that it comes with a "Maxtor Ultra ATA/133 card for Windows". That was my sole reason for buying this particular 200 GB hard drive instead of any other. I clicked the button at Amazon.com to purchase from J&R Music & Computer World since theirs was the primary "Add to Shopping Cart" button for this hard drive. Since it was to be a Christmas gift, I also paid for expedited shipping. That was on Dec. 8, 2003. It finally arrived January 13, 2004 - so much for the "expedited" estimated delivery date of Dec. 11-16 -- and so much for Christmas! The Maxtor box that finally arrived from J&R looked exactly like the one in the Amazon picture. It even had the same item number on a sticker on the box: L01P200. However there was no ATA/133 card. I called J&R and their customer service rep was confused, agreeing that their product is advertised as having an ATA/133 card in the box, but that theirs don't have the card in the box. However J&R agreed to put in a parts order and ship me the card since it was advertised as being included. (By the way they also stated they would refund my shipping since I paid for expedited and it took 5 weeks to arrive.) A few days later I received a phone call from J&R stating that they changed their minds, they would NOT ship the part since theirs didn't usually come with it anyway. Then they apparently decided to think it over a bit and said they would call me back. They never did. I called today to check on the ATA/133 status and was firmly told that the issue was closed; they will not ship the card and the most they can do is issue a $15.00 refund (and no shipping refund either). So I paid $211.63 (including shipping) to J&R Music & Computers through Amazon.com for a hard drive missing the advertised but required ATA/133 card, which took 5 weeks to get in the first place. Now I will have to pay at least an extra $40 (plus shipping) to buy the necessary ATA/133 card separately. Even with the "$15.00" refund this turns out to be a very expensive hard drive. All I can say is this: Never again will I purchase anything computer-related here again. I'm going back to Pricewatch from now on. At least with the merchants there you get what you order, and have real recourse if you don't.
Rating:
Summary: Silent, reliable, great capacity... what else ?
Review: I purchased this Maxtor drive and took advantage of a great rebate. Also got a UltraATA/133 card in the bundle.
Warning : not all boxes contain this UltraATA/133 card !! I can understand the frustration of not being able to access the entire 200GBs of the drive because of an old bios. But it is exactly the same problem for all drives, regardless of the brand. That's not specific to Maxtor. My PC (Athlon XP 1800/Gigabyte GA7DX, W2K) worked just fine. The installation is simple, but I may not be the best person to judge since I assembled my PC myself. Installation of a HDD is pretty standard. If you find it difficult, all drives will seem difficult to install. For this one, having a floppy to do the primary install is good because if you start from scratch, the floppy always works. The CD-ROM is sometimes more difficult.
What I like the most ?
- Performance is simply excellent
- Capacity is, I think, very good and is currently the range that offers the best price per gigabyte
- The drive is very quiet !
- The bundled ATA/133 controller card allows me to get the full performance for the 3 disks I have
- Capacity allows me to backup my entire 10G system disk frequently, which is nice. In short : an excellent drive, but the competition is so tight with other brands that you can probably rely purely on the price to make a purchase decision. Go for the biggest rebates...
Rating:
Summary: Good harddrive
Review: I've had this drive in my system for about a year to store MP3's and videos. I should have backed up all of my files because my old harddrive has failed, and with 200GB of storage, you won't run out very quickly. Mine came with the ATA card, and it was easy to install. It has worked fine, and quietly ever since and I am pleased with the purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent drive
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Review is for the MaxBlast Software
Review: Over the years I have had more than one system brought to its knees by the 'MaxBlast' partitioning software. DO NOT USE IT. If your OS (Operating System) cannot properly partition and format the drive to full capacity, then seek out one of the third-party programs that does it properly (e.g. Partition Magic). If the problem is with the BIOS (and not the OS) then upgrade the BIOS. If there is no upgrade (mfg out of business) then do not get a drive larger than your current BIOS supports. For those souls who bought this package expecting the ADVERTISED (still as of 24 Jan 2004) ATA card to be included then if it is not complain to your State Attorney General's Office of Consumer Protection. AMAZON is, or at least used to be, a Washington State company: WA has one of the strongest Consumer Protection offices in the country & it would be worthwhile contacting them, as well as the Better Business Bureau. If a company is going to advertise something then the company should sell what it advertises - anything else if fraud. Amazon is usually good about resolving these sorts of conflicts - do not know why they apparently are not doing so with this one. Maxtor drives are not my favorites, they are not as durable as many (I have a Maxtor 40GB external USB drive dying as I write this) but they are OK for the money (they are CHEAP) - but the MaxBlast Software is simply a time-bomb waiting to blow up for system. Avoid the Blast.
Rating:
Summary: Great Hard Drive
Review: This is a great drive. It's fast (about twice as fast as my other 2 and 3 year old 7200rpm drives) and it's silent and seems to be reliable. It's also at a great price for the capacity, and it's Maxtor, a trusted name in hard drives. I got the ATA card with mine, but I used another Silicon Image card I purchased previously (it has the same features but gave less problems, my computer took longer than it should to start up with the Maxtor ATA card). The MaxBlast software worked perfectly and never gave me any trouble. All those giving bad reviews because of the software or lack of card need to stop complaining. The point is, the actual hard drive is great, and you won't go wrong purchasing it. I like it so much, I decided to purchase the 160 gig version to replace two of my other hard drives.
Rating:
Summary: Beware the Maxtor MaxBlast 3.0 software
Review: WARNING: Maxtors warranty claims that they are not responsible for any data loss experienced by using their software to upgrade to the new drive.
TRANSLATION: After having my original (functioning, working) Win2K SP4 system corrupted by the MaxBlast 3.0 software (following all instructions), Maxtor has refused to respond to my complaints in a satisfactory way. The total cost was >20 hours of my time completely reinstalling my system and programs. SUGGESTION: Don't use the software provided. Research other hard drive vendors who make similar products but have better warranties.
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