Maxtor 5000DV External 7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive

by Maxtor

Product Details

Product Manual [1.25mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008MOPY
• Item model number: T01P160
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,561 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 18, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Room to Create
The Maxtor external hard drive makes it easy to add blazing fast storage specially designed for your unique creative requirements. With a storage capacity of 160 GB, you’ll have plenty of work-space for all your large projects, including over 15 hours of digital video. The Maxtor 7200 RPM hard drive plus both FireWire and USB 2.0 interface ports gives you one of the most versatile drives available for your Mac and PC.

The Best Ideas Need a Maxtor OneTouch Drive

• Easy--Just push the button to make a backup copy of your files.
• Fast--Back up files faster than floppy, CD or removable cartridge systems.
• Convenient--Make backup copies of your files, while you work, with a simple push of a button.
• Flexible--Use the Maxtor OneTouch button or run automated, unattended backups with Dantz Retrospect Express.

Features:

• Versatile add-on storage for editing videos and high-end graphic files
• Maxtor OneTouch: the easy way to make backup copies of your files
• Dantz Retrospect Express software included
• Quick and easy installation
• Flexible dual interfaces--FireWire and USB 2.0/1.1 compatible
• Powerful performance--7200 RPM
• Expandable storage
• Stands vertically or horizontally
• Hot-swappable
• Compact design
• PC and Mac compatible

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smooth & Easy: Wanted bigger storage for MP3, .AVIs, May 29, 2003

By 

CMD "CMD" (VA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Maxtor 5000DV External 7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bad Customer Service and Clunky Software, October 26, 2003

By 

Sarcastina - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maxtor 5000DV External 7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

This is a convenient tool for one that is a computer genius. And I mean genius in it's literal terms. If you aren't you're going to have some trouble like I did. Read the manual? I applaud you if you can understand what the heck that thing says. I've been using a computer for 10 years and I'm often teaching others how to use it and fixing my friends computers as well. I consider myself computer literate. But when it gets down to the deep and dirty technical stuff, I'm lost especially when it comes to external hard drives. So, quite naturally, when I first bought this external hard drive, after installing it as the directions guided me to, I had no clue what to do afterwords.

Things weren't working and I called tech support. The first agent I spoke with told me that my Maxtor was defective and to return it for another one. He also told me to learn how to use a computer first.

Mind you, I had been reading and reading not only the manual but also reading tech information on their site as well. And I had been running experiment after experiment trying to get this to work on my computer for 2 days. After no progress and pure frustration, I called tech support again. I got an agent on the line that wasn't very enthusiastic about her job and just wanted to rush through the call to get off the phone as soon as she could. This is where the poor customer service comes in. With every question I dared to ask, she condescended to me and made sure I felt like an idiot for not knowing the same material she did. Ummm, excuse me mam, but uh...that's why I'm calling. (?) Of course, I didn't say that to her, but that's what I felt like saying. The irony here is that she had to call for assistance twice because, she-herself didn't know how to solve my problem in a couple instances.

The problem was this: This external HD advertises that it comes pre-formatted. Well, I made the mistake and took that literally and thought that all I needed to do was follow simple instructions and that I'd be on my way. WRONG.

I give her credit, though. After having spent 45 minutes on the phone with her while she was helping me format a drive, I was able to finally use my external device. I also give her credit for helping me instead of telling me my device was defective like the last agent. Although she DID help me, it was less than a pleasure dealing with her.

Ok, fast forward three weeks later. Now the one-touch part of this device isn't working anymore. I get the infamous, "This program is not responding" when I load the program now. And it takes my computer 10 minutes to STOP the program. My computer has 80gigs of hard drive and 780-something for my RAM. No programs are running in the background, and I don't have much installed on my computer. I don't know why my Maxtor had decided to no longer work. I tried reinstalling it today, and no progress. The only way for me to backup all my information is to do it the old fashioned way which takes me about an hour.

So, it looks like I'll have to make another phone call to their lovely and pleasant tech support department. Goodie!

Anyway, like I mentioned before if you know your stuff inside and out about computers, you should have no problem. This device is a VERY handy tool, and it's better that I have this than nothing at all.

Good luck to you. And I pray you don't have an experience like I did.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Went bad after a few days, October 28, 2003

By 

Meengla (SC, United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Maxtor 5000DV External 7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I hate to give anything so bad rating but just cannot help that with this drive. Sorry, Maxtor. But I have to be honest. The drive sounds like a great deal: Less than $250 for a 160 GB external hard-drive with USB/Firewire and all cables included. And it would be a GREAT deal if you get a drive which actually works after a few days. I was not the lucky one.

Summary: Got it from Amazon. Hooked it up using the Firewire cable to my HP running XP Pro. I did the "drivers only" installation and XP installed it fine. I even did some backups and it was a breeze. Then after a few hours I noticed that it wasn't 'whisper-quiet' as the box label says. It was actually annoyingly noisy. I decided to unplug it and look into it later.

A few days later, realizing that I was still under Amazon's 30-day return warranty and to make sure the drive ain't bad, I decided to fully test it. Plugged it back and now XP detected the drive fine but it won't show with a Drive Letter in "My Computer". Plugging it in and out, Powering it on and off, as per Maxtor's instructions did not help. I tried the USB connection too but this time it was even worse: The noise from the drive was louder. And the computer did not recognize the USB interface at all.

I called Maxtor. The Tech. Support guy heard the drive on the phone (!) and quickly concluded that it was a "bad" drive as it was not supposed to make the noise and he could not help me troubleshoot it. His solution: Replace the drive. I would have to pay for shipping the bad drive to them and for the replacement drive--that could have added another $30-40 to the price I had already paid to Amazon.

Amazon has kindly let me ship the drive back to them for FREE! Thanks so much.

Oh, yeah: The Dantz Express is not very intuitive for backups--not that I ever got to that stage anyway.

May be you will get lucky and get a good drive, unlike me and some others here. But please test it thoroughly by running it round-the-clock for at least a week before you decide to keep it. It would have been a great deal for me if it had worked.

Good luck.