Rating: 
Summary: Great Product
Review: I took my still under warranty into have the USB ports repaired and they reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows. I lost everything. I was determined after getting everything back together that I would back up.I bought the Maxtor and it surpassed my expectations. Hooked up to a USB 2 (it also supports firewire) it is as fast as my internal drive. It is incredibly quiet. Actually, the fans on my tower make more noise than this drive. I have not used the one touch backup features since I have a program called Drive Image which automatically backups my hard drive and operating system at pre-determined times. When I used it with my laptop on a USB 1 it was slower, but manageable. One plus is that both USB and Firewire cables are included. I hate it when I buy a product only to find you have to purchase the necessary cables, etc. to go with it.
Rating:
Summary: Most reliable external drive around
Review: I use 40 Gigabyte firewire versions of external Maxtor drives at work, and have come to rely on them a great deal. Even after much use and movement and abuse, they endure now in their 3rd year of use! I liked them so much that when I needed to buy an external hard drive, I purchased the 120 gig version of this very drive. I have not been disappointed. The new drive works flawlessly with Windows XP, and it is fast too! This despite the fact that my machine does not support USB 2.0, though the new one I just talked my bosses into buying me should. These drives are bulky and the requirement for an external power source can be annoying, but if you need reliable and mostly sedentary hard drive space independent of your PC or Mac, these are the best things going. Reliable, durable and relatively cheap, these are a great option. I can offer no higher praise than to tell you that I liked the ones we bought on the job so much that I bought one with my own money. I really don't think you can go wrong with this product...
Rating: 
Summary: damaged on arrival
Review: I was looking forward to getting my hands on this drive. I have an Athlon 1.4Ghz running W2K with 1 gb of ram. I did not have any problems installing the drive to my computer via firewire. However, when I tried to transfer some files from my computer to the drive, it began to make that dreaded clicking noise. It sounded like it was trying to locate a certain file on a platter going back and forth. It also made this annoying beeping sound. There were numerous error messages that popped up (e.g. Windows could not transfer the files to the drive). I tried again after shutting the computer down, but that didn't make any difference. I tried transferring the files without the backup software, but that didn't make a difference either. I am returning this drive to Amazon tomorrow.
Rating:
Summary: great backup drive
Review: I was using this drive for 2 years both with my Apple G4, Powerbook 1GHZ and iBook 1GHZ. It never failed to appear within seconds on the desktop while connected via Firewire. In fact I am going to buy one more as you can connect them together in a chain. Also, it could be more than just backup drive. I run numerous applications from it. I will not recommend to run Final Cut Pro from it, even though it might work.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing but trouble; unreliable, unpredictable, doesn't work
Review: I've already had a warranty replacement from Maxtor and the new unit is just as unreliable. Major problems with i/o device errors when writing to it. Constantly having to reformat the drive (and lose all of the data on it). Lots of bad sectors found after it fails to finishing writing files to it. Not able to use it for backups because I can't be sure the data will be properly written and read back when needed. It's now just sitting next to my computer usused. What a waste of $299 (the price when I bought it). Problems also if you move it between computers with even slight version differences in operating systems.
Rating:
Summary: All of a sudden, strange noise, and all data lost.
Review: I've been happy with it and in fact I love it for about the last year and then... Yesterday it died! It just started to generate this noise that sounds like the read arm is gone and the disk is locked and cannot spin, and all my data is lost. THIS IS ALL MY DATA! My Graduation movie, all my photos, all my music, all my university projects, all my personal projects. I can retireve what I had in my other harddrives, but billed as an alternative to tape backup, it must surely do better then this! THIS IS A PIECE OF RUBBISH THAT NEEDS TO BE AVOIDED!
Rating: 
Summary: Short lifetime, but at least a graceful failure
Review: On the plus side, it worked for a while. The drive never stops spinning, which is mildly annoying and probably wastes electricity and shortens the life.
I used it for six months to store and edit home movies. Then, I didn't touch it much for another six months. Twelve months after purchase, I noticed that some files took a LONG LONG time to retrieve, three minutes instead of three seconds.
Running dirchk -f improved the performance, although it takes about a full day. Lots of failed sectors repaired. Performance improves but then goes downhill again.
I'm just past the warranty and can't get a replacement. Sigh.
But, at least my data isn't LOST. It's just hard to get. I will probably retire it when I get a new drive.
Rating:
Summary: Smooth & Easy: Wanted bigger storage for MP3, .AVIs
Review: SYNOPSIS: I wanted to backup movies, music and kids pictures and have room to add. I also wanted to be able to tote the HD around (not every day, but occassionally). This drive meets all of these criteria with excellent performance. DETAILS:
I received shipment from Amazon last night. After putting kids to bed, I decided to see if I could set it up quickly. I am running a Dell Dimension 1G MHz, 512 Rambus RAM, with XP. I plugged in the Maxtor, and immediately plugged it into my USB 1.0 Hub. XP picked up the HD and immediately added it (total time 6 minutes, 23 seconds). It took me longer to unpack and setup than it did to initially setup. So far so good. I immediately backed up my music and movies which took a long while, but even with low-end USB the data moved. I then added my purchased USB 2.0 adapter card, and the data really flew. I took minutes to copy things over that took me an hour with USB1 (which makes sense as it is about 40x faster).
RECOMMENDATION: As such USB2.0 or Firewire (adapter cards can be had for $..) is an almost MUST HAVE with this drive, unless you don't mind waiting an hour or two for a 500M movie to copy over. I then decided, maybe I should use the CD that was shipped, because there is probably "cool" backup software on that. This was a mistake, in my opinion. The installation ran for 5 minutes, at which point I killed it. When I tried again, I received an error message. After messing around, I rebooted. Upon going through the CD setup again, I actually got an error message that meant something. Some programs had written to the WINDOWS/INSTALLER file, so I had to delete out the UID in this Dir. At which point the install went smoothly, and I had a fully functional automated backup system (meaning both the software and the hardware).
RECOMMENDATION: Don't bother with the software, unless you are backing up your ENTIRE system for business critical needs. PORTABILITY: The drive was surprising compact (about the size of a paperback book). While I wouldn't want to have to carry it around due only to the wires (which would take up as much space as the drive), I definitely will be taking this on the road with me for extended trips (I work client implemenations and typically will be in a hotel for a week at a time, or to my remote cabin in Maine). It works incredibly well with my business laptop which is a IBM 800 Thinkpad (128 RAM) with USB 2.0. CONCLUSION:
Ease of setting up the hardware: A+.
Ease of setting up the software: B-.
Functionality of the Hardware: A+++
Functionality of the software: C- (I prefer to drag and drop, rather than use the scheduler, this is a personal preference). It would be MUCH more useful if you were backing up your entire system, including OS as you can do differential backups, complete backups, and so on. The one drawback is now that I have a big hard-drive, I feel compelled to add WiFi-g wireless access (approx $200), at which point I will want to be able to copy from my TiVo (approx $300). But hey, I'm driving the economy. Good luck everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Defective Drive Crashed -- All Data Lost
Review: The drive crashed and was unrepairable three weeks after the warranty expired. I LOST ALL DATA. Maxtor would not replace it because it was out of warranty, even though it was only three weeks out of warranty.
Rating: 
Summary: Reliable, external storage
Review: The gist of things is that this drive is quick, reliable, and sturdy. Upon installing it and connecting it to my USB 2 with the appropriate cable, the device worked like a charm. I was able to easily copy files to the hard drive, move and delete files from it, and generally perform tasks any other hard drive would be capable of. (I haven't tried the One-Touch feature and don't plan to, so I will refrain from commenting on it.)
My only gripe with this hard drive is that when I have to manually reboot my computer (which is a 1 GHZ Dell, 512 MB Ram, Windows ME) and ScanDisk comes up, often, after ScanDisk has finished, Windows doesn't start loading again for at least another two or three minutes. This is VERY frustrating, especially since occasionally the computer freezes completely and I have to manually reboot again. Fortunately I don't have to manually reboot twice terribly often. I'm not sure what the problem is - it may just be the way our computer is set up, for some reason - but I wish it would stop.
Bottom line? This hard drive is great. But if your computer has similar specs to mine, and you anticipate a problem such as the one I've mentioned, consider upgrading your whole computer to a newer system, which for all I know might fix the problem.
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