They're not bad, but of all the problems people have had with hard drives over time, Maxtor seem to crop up slightly more often than average. Why not get a hard drive from somewhere else if you're worried about choice?
It depends whether you're buying an internal drive to put in a PC, or an external drive you can plug into a USB or firewire port. I've had great success with most WD drives, but their Mybook external enclosures aren't very good. The brands I'm happy to stick to are WD, Samsung and Seagate.
Most of my hard drives are Maxtor, they are rock solid. So far I havent had one go bad on me in the past 4 years. I've had 2 IBM 120gb hard drives and 1 80gb Western digital hard drive go bad on me.
Most people recommend seagate hard drives because of there 5 year warranty and from my expierence they are reliable(haven't lost one yet).
My recommendation is to spend the extra 10 dollars and get a hard drive fan that screws to the bottom of the hard drive. Every one of my hard drives has one. High temperature is a hard drive worst enemy.
Use the below free program to monitor the temperature of your hard drive, the hard drive temperature should be below 45 celcius, if not get more fans on your case.
There was an article posted somewhere (I forget where) to the effect that cooled hard drives actually have a shorter life expectancy than warm ones. It's only when the drive is always above 45C when operating that problems occur. My internal hard drives are in solid boxes with sound dampening material and no airflow nearby, they get warm, but are still going strong after over a year in that environment.
I have now, 1 samsung SATA [internal], and a Westeren Digital secondary, so...ill look for Seagate then right?
I also have another question, because my room is a loud music studio environment, could the low pass bass have an effect on the Hard drives...you know like vibration etc...would aluminum boxes help /
