Customer Reviews

Maxtor 5000DV External 7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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...

their tech support is terrible. I bought a Maxtor external firewire drive when I was running Windows 98SE. When I experienced installation problems, tech support told me that I either didn't know what I was doing or that I had a bad drive. They (and I mean they) were downright arrogant about it. I returned the drive and bought a Western Digital external firewire drive. Same problem surfaced, but WD's tech support diagnosed the problem in about one minute and gave me the location on their site to download a software patch solution. They told me that the quirk was old news. Neither drive was defective, but Maxtor's service sure was. Five years later, I've learned a lot about PC innards and willingly buy Maxtor drives when the deal is right, but then, I'm no longer dependent on tech support and I assemble my own external drives for about half the price.

I purchased this drive from Amazon in July as a backup for my "desktop-replacement" notebook computer.

Installation was a snap. Simply unpack the drive, plug in the power and firewire cables and my notebook (running Windows XP) did the rest. My only problem was the lack of a 4-to-6 pin firewire cable for my laptop. But on advice of other reviewers I ordered a cheap cable for $6 online and was ready to go.

I don't use the bundled backup software as it's often easier to just drag and drop with Windows Explorer.

The sweetest plus of this drive are the two firewire ports on the back. After a reformat to NTFS to allow files larger than 4gb, I daisy-chained a firewire miniDV camcorder to the drive and began capturing and editing video.

Connected to firewire, this drive supports the power save features of XP. My system automatically shuts down (i.e. spins down) the drive after 5 minutes of non-use and when entering hibernation.

My future plans are to add a firewire DVD burner to the chain.

One tip, plug this drive into a UPS to avoid a crash during a sudden power outage. With a notebook on battery and this drive on an APC UPS, I don't wrry about the power suddenly cutting out during file transfer.

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.

Within a month of buying this drive, before I had to get it even half full, it spontaneously failed. It is no longer recognized as formatted and I have tried unsuccessfully to get my data back. It wasn't overworked either, as I hadn't even written any sector more than 3 times. Windows XP may have had something to do with it, but given what others have stated about failing, I believe this (and counterparts of other sizes) are junk. This review is for the 80 GB version. (January 16, 2004)

After using Restorer2000 (great program by the way) to restore my hard drive, I have successfully used this drive without error for over two years. It appears my earlier pessimism was unjustified. (September 5, 2006)

I bought three external drives in the last year and two died within the last 3 months. Avoid these drives if you want reliable backup.

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.