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Rating: 
Summary: Lasted less than a year
Review: I bought this hard drive initially for backup, but eventually I had moved a lot of photos and other media onto it alone, along with older schoolwork and such. Over the summer, I had to reformat my main hard drive, and never moved a lot of the backup stuff onto the main drive. Then one day this drive just stopped working. The red "thinking" light would not go off and the computer would not assign it a drive letter. Maxtor did oblige in replacing the drive for free, but would not even consider trying to actually fix the problem. They were quite cordial about replacing the drive, but the replacement is useless to me without the 25+ GB I had on the old drive. The warranty is voided if the casing is opened, so I can't try to fix it on my own, and my only option according to Maxtor is to get a company to attempt data recovery- a very expensive task. What bothers me most is that Maxtor wouldn't even explain what the problem was, let alone try to fix it or allow me to. Thumbs down for a product that didn't even last a year.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy to install, runs well, if only it had a higher RPM
Review: This is the "white refrigerator" of computer add-ons. No bells and whistles, but to install this hard drive on my Windows XP computer, all I had to do was plug the power in and attach the USB cable. I wish everything worked this easily.
If it ran at 7800 RPM, I'd have gotten the 100GB model for video storage. Previous reviews cited the drive's noise, the reviewer must have had a sub-par model, no one in my office can hear any noise.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install, runs well, if only it had a higher RPM
Review: This is the "white refrigerator" of computer add-ons. No bells and whistles, but to install this hard drive on my Windows XP computer, all I had to do was plug the power in and attach the USB cable. I wish everything worked this easily.
If it ran at 7800 RPM, I'd have gotten the 100GB model for video storage. Previous reviews cited the drive's noise, the reviewer must have had a sub-par model, no one in my office can hear any noise.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install, runs well, if only it had a higher RPM
Review: UPDATE: 12/17/2002I thought I had previously submitted a revision of my review but it looks like it got lost. Therefore, for the record, I'd like to point out that the unit I reviewed below eventually died and I got a replacement directly from Maxtor (they have a very good returns policy). The replacement has not had any errors, and was initially completely silent. After several months of use when it was pretty much continuously on it did develop a high pitched whine again. Not as bad as before but definitely not silent. Its louder than anything else in my PC. For this reason I keep it off mostly now. For anytone looking for a very quiet hard drive I would now recommend Seagate Baraccuda IV fluid bearing drive. Put that in a standard ... USB 2.0 drive enclosure and you'll be happy and have a simple upgrade path in the future. I look forward to Serial ATA becoming more prevelant and making frequent swapping of drive packs more feasible (IDE connectors are not designed for frequent use, the pins tend to bend too easily). For the record (I don't believe in re-writing history), here is my original review... ------------------------------------------------------------ I bought this because I was excited with the prospect of a large amount of detachable storage that was easily connected to any USB enabled PC, and offered fast access for those with USB2.0 (I bought a USB2.0 card for my main server machine). Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed with the drive and the concept of USB storage for three reasons: 1. While the drive is quiet it emits a high pitched whine that I can easily hear from 20 feet away. Its not loud, its just the high pitch that means you can hear it in a quiet room.
2. For the above reason I'd be tempted to power down the drive, however that means I need to stop the device on my PC and the turn it off (there is no on/off switch, you just disconnect the power cable). However that it a pain to do and hence I end up having it running all the time and just ignoring the whine as best I can... 3. I've twice had occasions when connecting the drive has resulted in repeated "thunks" and no e:/ drive appearing on my computer. The most recent time it happened I discovered the drive had got a corrupted master boot record that took a couple of hours of research to figure out how to repair (chkdsk wont do it). I've no idea how that happened - the drive was shut down correctly and was sitting unmoved the whole time. So I'm now suspicious of my drive and worried about loading it up with any more data. I've no idea if I have a common problem, or if its USB related, or an issue with NTFS, but I'm going to check with Maxtor. I think I'll get another drive (this time a Buslink) and back everything up and if I have this problem a third time its going back for a refund! I'm interested to hear if anyone else had similar problems.
Rating: 
Summary: Revised rating: an OKAY drive, nothing fancy.
Review: UPDATE: 12/17/2002 I thought I had previously submitted a revision of my review but it looks like it got lost. Therefore, for the record, I'd like to point out that the unit I reviewed below eventually died and I got a replacement directly from Maxtor (they have a very good returns policy). The replacement has not had any errors, and was initially completely silent. After several months of use when it was pretty much continuously on it did develop a high pitched whine again. Not as bad as before but definitely not silent. Its louder than anything else in my PC. For this reason I keep it off mostly now. For anytone looking for a very quiet hard drive I would now recommend Seagate Baraccuda IV fluid bearing drive. Put that in a standard ... USB 2.0 drive enclosure and you'll be happy and have a simple upgrade path in the future. I look forward to Serial ATA becoming more prevelant and making frequent swapping of drive packs more feasible (IDE connectors are not designed for frequent use, the pins tend to bend too easily). For the record (I don't believe in re-writing history), here is my original review... ------------------------------------------------------------ I bought this because I was excited with the prospect of a large amount of detachable storage that was easily connected to any USB enabled PC, and offered fast access for those with USB2.0 (I bought a USB2.0 card for my main server machine). Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed with the drive and the concept of USB storage for three reasons: 1. While the drive is quiet it emits a high pitched whine that I can easily hear from 20 feet away. Its not loud, its just the high pitch that means you can hear it in a quiet room.
2. For the above reason I'd be tempted to power down the drive, however that means I need to stop the device on my PC and the turn it off (there is no on/off switch, you just disconnect the power cable). However that it a pain to do and hence I end up having it running all the time and just ignoring the whine as best I can... 3. I've twice had occasions when connecting the drive has resulted in repeated "thunks" and no e:/ drive appearing on my computer. The most recent time it happened I discovered the drive had got a corrupted master boot record that took a couple of hours of research to figure out how to repair (chkdsk wont do it). I've no idea how that happened - the drive was shut down correctly and was sitting unmoved the whole time. So I'm now suspicious of my drive and worried about loading it up with any more data. I've no idea if I have a common problem, or if its USB related, or an issue with NTFS, but I'm going to check with Maxtor. I think I'll get another drive (this time a Buslink) and back everything up and if I have this problem a third time its going back for a refund! I'm interested to hear if anyone else had similar problems.
Rating: 
Summary: Inexpensive Virus Immune Backup - Plug and Play with XP
Review: What I wanted was an inexpensive detachable data back up drive that I could use with the backup features of XP-Pro. I wanted it detachable because then it is immune to any virus that might attack the main hard drive. I wanted USB 2.0 because it is "fast". This drive accomplishes all those goals. First it is inexpensive. Second, it is not at the leading edge of speed so it is probably more reliable - an important quality for back up media. Third, it is plug and play with XP. Fourth, it works transparently with the backup SW in XP-Pro. The initial backup of my (then) 12.7Gb of data took a little while. After the initial backup I set the default mode to incremental. I do a virus update and scan over night on Thursday, and then if there are no virus problems, run the incremental backup on Friday morning. Running the backup is trivial - I plug the drive into the computer, it is recognized, and ready to go in seconds. Go to the back up program and with about three clicks of the mouse the backup is under way. In incremental mode it typically does the backup of the 500 to 600 files (250Mb or so of data) that have changed since last time in less than 3 minutes. Then the drive can be disconnected and shut down till the next week backup session, and I'm ready to begin the next week. It is as close to painless data backup as one can get for the money. It also has the benefit that I can plug it into my laptop and back that up to a different file from time to time, and I can use it to move data between computers in large chunks. Works for me. Did I mention I like this drive?
Rating:
Summary: Inexpensive Virus Immune Backup - Plug and Play with XP
Review: What I wanted was an inexpensive detachable data back up drive that I could use with the backup features of XP-Pro. I wanted it detachable because then it is immune to any virus that might attack the main hard drive. I wanted USB 2.0 because it is "fast". This drive accomplishes all those goals. First it is inexpensive. Second, it is not at the leading edge of speed so it is probably more reliable - an important quality for back up media. Third, it is plug and play with XP. Fourth, it works transparently with the backup SW in XP-Pro. The initial backup of my (then) 12.7Gb of data took a little while. After the initial backup I set the default mode to incremental. I do a virus update and scan over night on Thursday, and then if there are no virus problems, run the incremental backup on Friday morning. Running the backup is trivial - I plug the drive into the computer, it is recognized, and ready to go in seconds. Go to the back up program and with about three clicks of the mouse the backup is under way. In incremental mode it typically does the backup of the 500 to 600 files (250Mb or so of data) that have changed since last time in less than 3 minutes. Then the drive can be disconnected and shut down till the next week backup session, and I'm ready to begin the next week. It is as close to painless data backup as one can get for the money. It also has the benefit that I can plug it into my laptop and back that up to a different file from time to time, and I can use it to move data between computers in large chunks. Works for me. Did I mention I like this drive?
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