MAXTOR External USB Sucks! 2

[gwinn7]

Just want to warn anyone considering buying a Maxtor External USB Drive, be careful! I strongly recommend avoiding the purchase of maxtor drives where they are externally based with a USB connection.

From my personal experience I have had 2 out of 3 of these drives lose their partition information. The third drive has not been interacted with for sometime, so I am not certain whether it is going to fail too. Fortunately, I had backups in other locations, so I am not stuck!

After searching for customer reviews, I have found numerous reports from other users with similar problems and complaining about lost data.

The models I used were the 100GB and the 300GB External USB 2.0 drives.

I hope that it helps you avoid making a disasterous purchase!

Gary
gwinn7

 

[cdogg]

Keep in mind that hard drives are extremely susceptible to shock or other movements while powered on.

Even if you can't hear the drive doing anything, that doesn't mean it's not. If you attempt to move the hard drive while it's powered on, you ALWAYS run the risk of physically damaging the disk or read/write head.

Do you think it's possible that this might have happened to you? I've seen just as many occurrences with any brand out there. External drives are nearly identical to internal ones, with the exception that it's not mounted in a stationary position (the USB interface doesn't change the mechanics of the drive).

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[gwinn7]

cdogg,

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I realize hard drives can be sensitive to movement, or shock. But, I never subjected these drives to that kind of abuse/use, whether the drive was on, or off. I believe I give it enough time to spin down/up between power cycles.

I do relocate the drive, but that's why I have it. I use it as a portable backup device. Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but I don't know what that is right now.

Gary
gwinn7
A+,L+,N+,I+,P+

 

[cdogg]

ok, just offering some insight. I believe some drives can spin for as long as 30 seconds after you power them off.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[gwinn7]

cdogg,

I do appreciate your insight. Thank you.

Generally speaking, these hard drive manufactures really need to be active in doing something about these problems whether it be (a) warning users better (b) instructing users better (c) make the drives more robust (d) not sell them.

There isn't much more frustrating than losing data. Plugging my hard drive in and see that it won't read does not build my confidence (understatement!) in the product. So, buyer beware!

Gary

 

[G0AOZ]

I echo cdogg's comments. I'm afraid that most users I've observed seem to treat them like a discarded house brick, and of course it's not long before they fail.

I would say that most of the (many) failures I've seen have all been Maxtor drives...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[gwinn7]

Goa0z,

Well, there definitely seems to be a trend with Maxtor drive failures and I agree with cdogg too.

As for my failed drives, I believe I treated carefully. You should also know that the 300GB Maxtor was hardly ever moved! One day, it just lost its partition data!

As for my 100GB Maxtor, I never dropped it, nor did I throw it around like I would a brick. I would always powered it down and carefully placed it in my travel bag between my home and the office.

Gary

 

[dglienna]

Ever unplug the USB cable with the power ON on the Maxtor?
We just got a 200G WD unit last week, and it seems pretty solid.
It is a one-touch unit. We don't move it unless the blue power light is off for about a minute, or unplug it for 10 seconds. Going to deliver it to a client this week.
I'll make sure he gets warned, though.

-David
2006 Microsoft Valueable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[gwinn7]

You know, the bottom line is this is a plug and play device. The fact of the matter is when a product is produced the company needs to make sure the user is going to have a good experience with it. I refer to my prior post on what should be the case about this.

Remember the problem with the "park" for the read/write heads on hard disks?! Well, this was a problem years back (about 17 years) and was finally fixed. But, it resulted in a lot of problems for computer geeks like us. No tech knows everything all the time and we can hardly blame the users for reasonable operation. The manufacturer needs to put safe guards in their product so the user doesn't have to worry about making an oops.

If I made an oops, then I should not have learned the hard way like this. I made every attempt to treat them with care.

I am glad you intend to warn that user. Thank you.

Gary

 

[cdogg]

Yeah, this is the only thing I can find at Maxtor's website:
Should I leave my 1394/USB External Storage device powered on?

Unfortunately, there aren't any manuals to download. I can't imagine they wouldn't include the same information with the drive's retail packaging, but then again, it is Maxtor!


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[tf1]

I've not tried the drives you have had bad experience with, but I do have the Maxtor Shared Network Storage device (300GB model) and use it for storing shared video and music on the famiy CAT5 network: it is also acting as a print server (through one of its USB ports).

Although it is only Fast Ethernet (100Mbps), it's performance is 'adequate'. I've not had any problems with it yet.


Regards: tf1

 

[vsberlina1995]

I use 3 250GB and have a 300GB still not opened. The 250's still seem to be running fine for taking out to clients and I haven't had any problems yet (knock on wood).

How do I set a laser printer to stun?

 

[lornkilian]

In the last 2 days, I have just experienced the exact same problems with both a 100GB and a 300GB External Maxtor USB drive. Each time the drives lost their partition information. I had to use some forensics recovery software in order to restore my data. I'm staying far away from these things. Luckily I got a different manufacturer's drive and am not having anymore problems.

 

[NateBell]

My company has been using a 250GB Maxtor One-Touch drive for the last 2 years. It has been serving us well until last week when it started producing IO errors. With Linux, we got intelligent errors telling us what was wrong, but in Windows, it was only manifested in the computer appearing to lock up as long as the drive was connected and powered on.

Since we're past warrenty, I pulled the drive from the enclosure, put it in a Linux box, reformatted it, and ran bonnie++ on it for an hour. No problems. I then put another drive in the Maxtor enclosure and tried to do the same thing, but only ended up with the same timeout errors.

It looks like Maxtor's enclosure failed on us. That's good news for us since we can plug the drive into another enclosure (way cheaper than a new drive) and keep on truckin. After reading the customer reviews on Newegg I'm lead to believe this isn't an isolated problem.

So, if your drive seems to have failed, and you don't mind voiding your warranty, make sure you don't have a broken enclosure before you toss the drive.

The silly thing about these drives is they aren't special drives made for being moved around. They're just stock 3.5" hard drives with a little bit of foam and rubber to insulate any shock. I guess I had assumed the name brand external hard drives would be more advanced, but it now looks like you can buy a hard drive and enclosure for much less than one of these Maxtor One Touch drives, and you aren't sacrificing quality.

Nate Bell

 

[dennisbbb]

Maxtor disks are not very reliable.

I have 50+ out of 100 bad Maxtor 120Gig. Running PowerMax diagnostic gave me the dreaded error code. I have to say.. avoid avoid avoid buying Maxtors..

I think Seagate is the only way to go nowadays.

 

[mapjr007]

I've not posted before, but after just now having my 300GB drive lose its partition information, felt I would add my experience. Several weeks ago my drive lost its partition. Me freaking out (instead of thinking for a minute), reformatted the drive. I hadn't backed it up, but after spending money for hard drive recovery software and using a different machine, I was able to retrieve the info. Sidenote: All info is now backed up.

I had just restored all the backed up information to the drive and had been using it a couple of days. I turned the laptop off last night, turned the laptop back on today, then poof, no partition information for the drive. My mistake was probably not turning the drive off before the laptop, but in either case, having worked in the computer field for 18 years now, I would expect a little bit more (ok, a lot) out of a drive like this. I do move this drive, but only after taking precautions of letting it sit for a few mins after the power is off. Otherwise, this drive is just an external drive to my laptop.

I've had the drive over a year and have traveled with it and the laptop quite a bit during that time, but have only started having issues with it in the last month or so.

Mike

 

[BadBigBen]

The way I read this now, is that the DRIVES in itself are not at fault... but the USB interface, or the DRIVERS to the USB interface...

Hmmmm... could it be that maybe the USB Ports are either underpowered or damaged?

I've had Maxtor drives, and still do, for ages, none and I mean none of them DIED nor lost their Partitions... I am using an ancient (10 yrs old) 20meger for back up...

The drives that did die on me, where Fujitsu and Hitachi/IBM's... Seagates and Western Digitals are in my experience pretty good choices... and what NateBell mentioned, you can build your own for cheaper....

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[gwinn7]

Ben,

No, its not the "drives" per se that is the concern. The concern is the overall product. It may very well could be a problem with a particular component like USB, but it appears that Maxtor makes little or no effort to provision for this possibility. Other hard drive vendors may very well be just as guilty of this. Its just that there seems to be a trend with Maxtor drives as I have been reading.

Other than the external drives, I cannot recall specifically when a Maxtor hard drive arbitrarily lost its partition while I used it.

Gary
gwinn7

 

[cdogg]

Gary,

Take into account that Maxtor (like any hard drive manufacturer) must backup any product they sell, and make accomodations for victims of "high failure rates".

Recall that IBM (hard drive sector is now Hitachi) manufactured a flaky model a couple years ago known as the Desktar 75GXP. This bad boy was revolutionary at the time but suffered failure rates some claimed to be in the high single digits (like 8 or 9% of all drives manufactured). That's right boys and girls, anything over 1% is considered high. You can imagine what kind of controversy this caused.

If Maxtor was truly scamming the public, there would have been a law suit filed by now I'm sure. You can contact the Better Business Bureau if you think you have a case, or email the Maximum PC's watchdog in hopes for a response.
( check out

http://www.maximumpc.com/contact.html

)

Realize that it's easy to find a lot of users who share your frustration with ANY product on the market. However, don't let that mislead you into believing that it's a faulty product. The best thing you can do is report your complaint and move onto another brand if you're convinced Maxtor is to blame.


By the way, I don't work for Maxtor!


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[brian619]

Hi,

I purchased a Maxtor 250g external usb drive about 6 months ago and it is failing or has already failed. I connected it last night and it is making a very disturbing and repetitive buzzing sound - almost like the clicking sound that you hear when a traditional hard drive is failing. The computer doesn't see the drive at all. I moved over the weekend and it probably got bumped in just the right spot.

A few of you in this thread mentioned that you successfully recovered your data with some recovery software.

Would this software even work if the computer doesn't even detect the drive?

Could the problem be with the usb connection and not with the hard drive itself?

If you think that recovery software would work in this case would someone please recommend a data recover program that you have had success with?

If recovery software does not work could a professional data recovery company possibly retrieve data from a usb drive as they can with traditional hard drives? - probably at a cost of one dollar per megabyte :-(

Thank you and I'd really appreciate some quick responses as my wife will probably kick me out of the house if I don't have any positive news for her by this weekend

Regards,
Brian.