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Maxtor G01J040 External USB 2.0 5400 RPM 40 GB Hard Drive

Maxtor G01J040 External USB 2.0 5400 RPM 40 GB Hard Drive

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Decent Drive
Review: First of all, I rank this item high, because of it's affordability. Usually it is around 100 dollars. I believe only a brand "LaCie" offer cheaper, which I do NOT recommend those items.

Anyways, to get back to this device, I need to back-up my files from the old computer, since I was getting a new computer. With USB 2.0, its speed is something to brag about.

The unit doesn't look fancy or professional at all (plastic design) but the performance is still top of the line.

Here are the minuses:
1. With the weight of this unit and the AC Adapter, forget about carrying it around. The unit is not designed for that purpose.

2. There is no on/off switch. you will have to unplug it to turn it off.

Other than those problems, what you will get is an external hard drive, nothing less nothing more.

For long~ term use, be smart and buy something more reliable. Invest more money for a fancier product.

In my case, I only use it when I need to transfer big chunk of drive to anothe. For everyday use, PLEASE buy something better.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Decent Drive
Review: First of all, I rank this item high, because of it's affordability. Usually it is around 100 dollars. I believe only a brand "LaCie" offer cheaper, which I do NOT recommend those items.

Anyways, to get back to this device, I need to back-up my files from the old computer, since I was getting a new computer. With USB 2.0, its speed is something to brag about.

The unit doesn't look fancy or professional at all (plastic design) but the performance is still top of the line.

Here are the minuses:
1. With the weight of this unit and the AC Adapter, forget about carrying it around. The unit is not designed for that purpose.

2. There is no on/off switch. you will have to unplug it to turn it off.

Other than those problems, what you will get is an external hard drive, nothing less nothing more.

For long~ term use, be smart and buy something more reliable. Invest more money for a fancier product.

In my case, I only use it when I need to transfer big chunk of drive to anothe. For everyday use, PLEASE buy something better.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gets the Job Done
Review: I bought this drive to use as a way to transport movies and music from one computer to another. The hard drive works flawlessly with Windows XP. All you have to do is plug it in, wait and Windows will recognize it. Then to send files, you just select the files and right click, then select send to F:Drive(or whatever drive letter Windows assigns it).

It works extremely fast, taking only about a minute for a GB of files. That is with a USB 2.0, so I'm not sure how it would do with USB 1.1.

I would recomend this drive to anyone looking to clear some space on their main hard drive, to back up important files, or even if your transporting large files from one computer to another. The drive, USB cable, and power cord can quite easily fit in your backback or breifcase if you need to take it with you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Perfect Secondary/Backup Hard Drive for Laptops!
Review: I have been using Maxtor external hard drives for just over a year now and have made recommendations to family and colleagues which have resulted in them buying many of them as well. So with experience with close to a dozen hard drives, we have not had any problems and have nothing but praise for the drives.

First off, with internal hard drive prices for laptops so expensive and so difficult to install, external hard drives that use firewire (IEEE1394) are a great option. These hard drives use both firewire and USB, so you can take the information and hot swap it among multiple computer (like a thumb drive) or keep it plugged in to a single computer for use a secondary hard drive. I have found virtually no speed difference between accessing files on the external hard drive versus the internal.

The automatic backup feature, makes the hard drive all that much more useful. It comes bundled with Dantz Retrospect Express program which is an easy-to-use option for automatically backing up just what you want with a touch of a button. I backup often, usually just punching the button as I go meet to clients. It usually finishes the automated process by the time I return. Because backing up is so easy to do, when I did lose the hard drive on one of my laptops, I barely missed a beat after I got it replaced, simply restoring the drive image to make my new laptop look just like my old one.

I highly recommend Maxtor external hard drives.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Bad product
Review: I used this drive for just over a year. It worked great at first. I stored all my very important files on it. I was using it as a back-up device.
Suddenly, without warning, the drive fried one day. I couldn't access it. Customer support was no help. I ended up losing all my files--over 3 years of research.
I looked around and talked to some other people. Apparently, this is a very common problem with Maxtor USB drives. That's why Maxtor doesn't issue longer warranties.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Works like a non reusable camera!
Review: In the beginning it will work fine, but then it will malfunction out of the blue and take your important files with it. The Maxtor 40 Gig External Drive erased all my work out of no ware one sunny day and I used a file recovery to retrieve my work. This happened 3 times where the third time I couldn't get nothing back and now it just plain doesn't work. Stay away from Maxtor it's not even worth the cheap price!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: warranty says it all
Review: The warranty is only 90 days, so Maxtor obviously does not have any faith in the long term viability of this drive. And even if it fails within that short time frame, you need to call an 800 number, get an RMA, ship the product to Maxtor, and wait for a repair or replacement for an unspecified amount of time. No drop off service. Next time I purchase a drive I will be looking much closer at the warranty.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Fine for a little time
Review: This drive seemed ideal for my use, i.e. additional storage and backup. My system is windows 98ME with USB 1.1. Drive worked OK for about 6 months, started to make "clanky" sounds, died and took my computer with it. I expected better from Maxtor. I'm not sure what caused this since the drive was never physically moved and it had ample ventilation.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Quality external mass storage on a budget
Review: This is a regular issue external hard disk. I acquired it four months ago and have had no mechanical problems with it.

One thing that struck me as odd was the drive came pre-formated with one 37 gigabyte FAT32 partition. That may be handy for older versions of windows that don't support NTFS. There is a couple of gigabytes in unpartitioned space on the drive. I would suggest most user's repartition the drive and install a more capable filesystem.

If you are not planning to frequently disconnect the drive I would also suggest that you travel to the windows control panel and enable write caching. After doing this you need to use the safely remove hardware option to remove it properly. Doing this speeds up write performance for the drive somewhat. I have only tried this under windows xp home and it works fine.

Even though this is a USB 2.0 device if you have a older computer with USB 1.1 this drive is a great deal for you. It works perfectly with USB 1.1. It will seem slow as that particular interface isnt the fastest thing ever. But the drive is still a easy way to transfer large amounts of data between machines or to perform data backup.

My machine dual boots mandrake linux 9.2. The drive was recognized and automatically configured during the linux install routine for this version of linux.

The box it came in included a driver disk and all the needed cables and the external power supply. A tiny manual was also included.

In my opinion this is a very affordable product that performs well. The drives only serious negative is that it lacks a power switch of any kind.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Quality external mass storage on a budget
Review: This is a regular issue external hard disk. I acquired it four months ago and have had no mechanical problems with it.

One thing that struck me as odd was the drive came pre-formated with one 37 gigabyte FAT32 partition. That may be handy for older versions of windows that don't support NTFS. There is a couple of gigabytes in unpartitioned space on the drive. I would suggest most user's repartition the drive and install a more capable filesystem.

If you are not planning to frequently disconnect the drive I would also suggest that you travel to the windows control panel and enable write caching. After doing this you need to use the safely remove hardware option to remove it properly. Doing this speeds up write performance for the drive somewhat. I have only tried this under windows xp home and it works fine.

Even though this is a USB 2.0 device if you have a older computer with USB 1.1 this drive is a great deal for you. It works perfectly with USB 1.1. It will seem slow as that particular interface isnt the fastest thing ever. But the drive is still a easy way to transfer large amounts of data between machines or to perform data backup.

My machine dual boots mandrake linux 9.2. The drive was recognized and automatically configured during the linux install routine for this version of linux.

The box it came in included a driver disk and all the needed cables and the external power supply. A tiny manual was also included.

In my opinion this is a very affordable product that performs well. The drives only serious negative is that it lacks a power switch of any kind.


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