Rating: 
Summary: Two strikes and you're out
Review: After several months of use, my Maxtor 5000DV 160GB lost its FAT formatting and became inaccessible, so I called Maxtor customer support. They told me I should have initially formatted the drive as NTFS (even though the instructions that came with my drive said nothing about this) and suggested I use a very expensive data recovery service to salvage the corrupted drive. Needless to say, I was very disappointed in Maxtor's response. I hung up, did a quick web search, and found lots of good, inexpensive data recovery software. After transferring my recovered files to a different drive, I exchanged the Maxtor 5000DV 160GB for a new one (they wouldn't give me my money back, so I thought I'd at least try a new drive). Well, what do you know? The new one, running on WinXP, and formatted as NTFS failed in exactly the same manner!
Very poor quality product.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Drive...Mediocre Software
Review: As usual, Maxtor has put out a great product. The USB 2.0 interface makes this thing scream. Accessing it is just like accessing your internal drives.I use it for both boots on my desktop and my laptop. The portability factor is a big plus. Now the minuses:
- the drivers included are not XP certified, you'll have to immediately go out to Maxtor's site and download the certified drivers. -The Retrospect software is more than a little klunky. I'm a programmer and it took me a while to figure it out. The interface is not very intuitive by modern standards, but I did eventually get it all working. All in all, though, the drive is very worthwhile and a good value, I recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as I thought
Review: At first, I had major problems using this product with a USB 1.1 interface on a win98 computer 600 PIII with 512M ram and 240 gig hard drive space. After having installed a new SIIG card that supports firewire, USB2.0 and ethernet, my computer now works well enough with this 160 Gig external hard drive to warrent keeping it. (I've only had it a week.) It is handy to create quick backups of large hard drives onto external hard drives. The "click to disconnect" hot swap icon now works with both the firewire interfaces and the USB2.0 interfaces, whereas it didn't work at all when I used the hard drive through a USB 1.1 interface. I originally had major difficulties with the "backup" software that does periodic backups while compressing the data. I haven't re-tested this software yet with USB2.0 or the firewire interface. Overall, If you plan to use this device to backup your pc, be sure to upgrade to at least usb 2.0. This device performs o.k. with that interface, but very poorly, if at all, with the usb1.1 interface.
Rating:
Summary: Bad drive
Review: Died in 2 months. This is my second Maxtor drive to die. I will never buy from this company. Runs real hot. I stacked another drive on top of the Maxtor and the Maxtor actually melted the plastic of the second non Maxtor drive. This drive cannot be stacked. My second drive died in 5 months. This time I turned it off at nights so maybe it lasts a little longer. Still within my one year warranty. I am not sure if I will ask for another drive. Why bother with a new drive if it is unreliable? It's not worth the time wasted formating it.
Rating:
Summary: 160GB version failed within the first year
Review: I am very dissapointed that I lost my back-up data with this product. Within 6-months of use, it gave an I/O error one day. None of my data is accessiable. This was supposed to be used as a back-up device. If a back-up device is not reliable, you shouldn't spend a dime on it. I don't recommend this product.
Rating: 
Summary: DON'T buy this !
Review: I bought a 5000DV with 160gb storage capacity about two months ago. It crashed the same week I bought it. It had about 60gb of used data on it when it happened, so I got really mad. It has no power on/off button which is also very annoying. The support is really really bad. The only good thing here is that you can get a replacement in advance but the worse thing is that you'll have to pay for the shipping of the broken one. Which means alot to me since I live in Scandinavia and had to send it to Ireland. The shipping alone cost me almost 90$ american dollars ! The next time I buy something like this I'll avoid Maxtor. I DON'T recommend this product to anyone. Go buy from another brand, it will save you plenty.
Rating:
Summary: Lousy Unreliable Drive
Review: I bought a Maxtor 5000DV 120 GB drive and it worked well at first, but then one day I had an I/O error and lost everything on the hard drive. My whole music collection!! The Maxtor people were of NO HELP. I reformatted the disc, and it seems to work, but now I am afraid it will mess up again. SO I can't use it for anything important. A waste of money.
Rating: 
Summary: Great External Drive
Review: I bought the Maxtor Personal Storage 5000DV - 160GB Firewire/USB Drive a couple of weeks ago. Installation with my Dell Inspiron 4000 using XP and Firewire was simple. The drive has been going well ever since. Im using it as both a backup of my laptop hard disk and to store my Itunes music files. The Retrospect backup software seems fine and is easy to use. Just hit the button on the front of the drive to initiate a backup. Very pleased with this device.
Rating:
Summary: Do not waste your money and files on this drive!!
Review: I bought this 160GB External Hard Drive thinking it'd be a great addition to my system and allow me to store my MP3 collection (Tracks I've ripped from discs I own). I had over 26,000 files that I transferred over to my Maxtor drive the day I received it. It was easy to set up on my WinXP Pro machine using the Firewire option. It worked like a charm for less than a week. I then tried to reboot my machine after making some basic changes to it by adding new software which should have no impact on this Maxtor drive as it was installed on my main internal hard drive and didn't use any files from my Maxtor drive. Upon reboot, I opened up "My Computer" and was going to browse my G: Drive (The Maxtor 160GB External) and low and behold, the wonderful amber light comes on the front of the Maxtor drive.. I wait for it to go off thinking maybe it's just a temporary issue. About 30 minutes later, upon returning to my computer, I see that I have a G drive, but it is not able to be clicked due to an "inpage operation" error. I cannot retrieve files from this drive and don't even have the option to reformat the drive. The drive is DEAD! Luckily for me, I only stored mp3s on this drive.. I have the original CDs for these mp3s, so I can re-rip them and place them on a RELIABLE drive.. Do not trust any important file being placed on this drive if you are still willing to buy it after reading the amazon.com customer reviews.. You will be guaranteed to lose the file, have a horrible experience with Maxtor's website and customer service and will end up being stuck with a $225.00, blue and black, 5 pound paper weight.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible product
Review: I bought this so I could travel with my ripped CDs, and so that I could also have space when I needed it. I also used this as a hookup to my laptop so i could watch movies. One word: Incredible. This product is light enough to bring on the airplane, and versatile enough to bring to a friend's house. There is just about NOTHING wrong with this hard drive. It is a very uesfull tool for any extremist out there or for anyone that wants to have a more convenient life. With the price you pay, you get a standard 7200 RPM and a more than standard 160gb hard drive. That is a lot of space for the price you pay. Boy, when you think up a product like this, you are for sure going to get the sales. This maxtor external hard drive is the way to go for ANYBODY looking for a nice portable hard drive.
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