Customer Reviews

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 GB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I have bought many Hard Drives this past year, and let me tell you Maxtor is one of the best. This hard drive, is one of the fastest you will find without going towards those expensive SCSI drives. The capacity is the biggest I have seen for less than $300, plus the fact that this Hard Drive comes from a great company. In my opinion Maxtor is the BEST Hard drive manufacturer. The only draw back is that the size of the hard drive makes it hard to maintain without splitting the drive into at least 2-3 partitions. It takes about 10 hours for this hard drive to be defragmented (optimize) when it is 90% full. Of course, this is always the issue when buying a huge hard drive. This is the best Hard Drive yet, both quality and price.

The Maxtor DiamondMaxx 40 Gigabyte hard-drive is, quite simply, one of the best hard-drives I have ever seen in my life. While I've seen faster and better drives, none are as affordable dollar-for-gigabyte, and all have some inherent flaw(s) which make them unsuitable for data backup and recovery. The DiamondMaxx is a very stable hard-drive, able to survive all kinds of temperature extremes (though it is not recommended that you test this theory). I have purchased them for many different clients, and all agree that this drive is the workhorse of their companies. I, myself, am using one of these drives in the computer I am writing this review from.
Bottom line: if you want dependablility and overall good performance in your hard-drive(s), than look no further than the DiamondMaxx 40 GB hard drive.

I've talked to a number of people about Maxtor drives, and quite a few have told me to avoid them like the plague. I furrow my brow questioningly at these people because my experience has been quite the contrary.

Over the years I have purchased and installed several Maxtor hard drives and have had few problems with them. I have an old Pentium 166 at home that has a Maxtor drive in it, and it's been running solid now for several years. I've only purchased one Maxtor drive that gave me trouble, and it was a bare drive I purchased at a computer show from a less-than-reputable vendor because of the low price. When I discovered that the drive was bad, Maxtor held up its end of the bargain quite nicely. I phoned them about the bad drive, they told me to ship it to them and that they'd ship a new drive to me simultaneously. They took my credit card number in case I tried to stiff them but did not charge the card. I got my new drive in a couple of days and it worked great. In fact, I still have it.

For novice upgraders, the MaxBlast software makes it a snap to format the drive. Essentially, all you have to do is plug the drive in, insert the MaxBlast disk and then install whatever software you want on the drive after its formatted.

If you need information on any of their drives, it's easily accessible on their Web site, along with any software you may need. For example, if you purchase an OEM bare drive, you can download the MaxBlast software from their Web site.

In spite of all the bad reviews Maxtor seems to get, I have to say that I like their drives. They work fine for me. And when you look at Maxtor from a bang-for-your-buck standpoint, I think they stand above the rest of the hard drive crowd because you can get more storage for your money and, depending on the drive, more performance too.

I give Maxtor my stamp of approval.

I recently purchased this drive. It seems it has brought new life to my 333MHz machine so much so that I will be able to use this for quite a bit longer than I thought. In conjunction with a memory upgrade (96MB to 128MB) and upgrade to Windows/ME it has essentially more that "doubled" the speed and capacity of my old machine which was becoming a bit of a clunker.

The drive looks identical in size and configuration to the previous two Maxtor drives I have purchased so the compatibility makes for a simple and easy install. Maybe one day they will develop a "smart jumper" for the master/slave decision and configuration but this is a small price and easy step to install the drive. I installed it as a slave to do a format and copy, then as a master. A Windows install from the CD completed the migration and I was back in business in no time.

I am not real fond of the Maxblast software but for some this is probably a necessity. I had to upgrade my BIOS which took a bit of research and time but once done made the install a straighforward process.

The 7200 RPM drive is a considerable improvement over the older 5400 RPM drives and I believe the access time of around 9ms is pretty good for drives using the EIDE technology. The drive is quieter too. The upgrade from 4.3MB to 40MB is huge. I thought I would never fill the older one, but did. Of course I am saying the same thing about the 40MB but with the need to save more images and perhaps even motion and sound clips I suspect I will eventually need more in the future. The cost of this unit make upgrades downright affordable as well as easy. My other two Maxtor drives performed flawlessly so I am expect the same quality for this one.

I rate Maxtor (for compatibility and quality from my old drives) and this drive tops (for cost and performance); 5 well-deserved stars.

Like some of the other reviewers, I have owned a number of drives by a number of manufacturers. Maxtor is the only brand I have NEVER had crash on me. That's not to say that the other brands are not good, but I have been unable to beat Maxtor's quality/price ratio with any other drive. ALL hard drives will crash eventually, and when one does, the loss is usually so great as to turn one away from that manufacturer altogether, which is probably not totally fair, but understandable. Benchmarks are, for the most part, meaningless because only some benchmarking software is going to be able to really tell the difference in a few thousandths of a second of access time. I mean really, is it worth spending an extra $100 just so your database file loads two seconds faster? Unless you're blessed to have money to burn, I'd doubt it. The main features to look for are stability (resistance to crashing), capacity and general, practical performance. I use only Maxtor drives because for me, I get the best of all these for the best price. Since, as I said ALL drives crash eventually, I do make sure I keep valuable data backed up just in case, and since I don't use pirated software, I have all my original disks. It's a hassle to reinstall everything, but it's better than not being able to. In all my years, Maxtor has been the least crash-prone drive I know of, and that's why I recommend them highly. Besides, they have a 3-year warranty (like most others), so if one should crash, they'll replace it promptly (I assume). If you'd like more detailed information, check out Maxtor's website. Lot's of eye-opening information can be found there, some of which is not mentioned here or on the product box. Believe me, it's worth it to take a look

All I can say is this: The computer literacy of those who have negatively reviewed this drive, due to their having had difficulty with either its installation or use, must be about equal to their ability to manipulate the English language, i.e. little to none.

Actually, that's not entirely fair. I suspect that the reason these people had trouble was because they were "real men," and were not about to lower themselves to reading the directions that are included in the box. Seeing themselves as computer "experts," they clearly believe that any problems they experience must be the fault of the hardware or software -- After all, as experts, they could not possibly be the weak link in the chain, right?

Well, I have recently installed this drive and, although I was initially daunted by the prospect of ripping the heart out of my computer (especially having read some of the negative reviews), the installation process went smoothly and without incident.

The directions are clear, detailed, well-written, and easy to understand. If you just follow the directions, installation should be a breeze (unless, of course, there are other hardware issues with your computer that might adversely affect the installation process).

The software included with the drive performs exactly as described in the instructions; it did an absolutely terrific job imaging my old hard drive and copying the information to the new one.

Being that I upgraded from a 4500rpm drive, the 7200rpm of this Maxtor drive effectively doubled the speed of my computer. People focus way too much on processor speed and amount of RAM; the processor and RAM only matter after the data has been retrieved from the hard drive. If your hard drive is slow, a fast processor and unlimited RAM will be bottlenecked by the access speed of the drive and rendered ineffectual.

It's like a world-class sprinter trying to run in shackles -- It just doesn't work!

The drive is quick, quiet, and a joy to work with. I split it into two partitions (an option during the install the installation process), so that I can archive data on the second drive. One 40Gb drive is great; two 20Gb drives is even better!

I recommend this drive. However, installation of a hard drive, even one with documentation as thorough as that included with this drive, is a big job and has a lot of room for error. I do not suggest that a beginner make this his first attempt at an upgrade to his computer. However, for someone like me, who has done some upgrades "inside the box" (RAM, modems, EtherNet cards, and the like), this is a great project and a terrific way to bring new life to an old machine.

PS: My computer is an HP with a 333Mhz Celeron CPU, 160Mb of RAM, and (now!) 45Gb of hard drive space (I re-installed the old drive as slave, as per the instructions that came with the new drive -- waste not, want not!).

At first, I was a little bit hesitate of purchasing a new hard drivebecause this was my first time installing a new component into mycomputer. (I end up having my brilliant cousin install it for me anyway). When I receive the box, it said installing it was simple as 1, 2, 3 and it was easy as 1, 2, 3. It was smooth sailing from start to finish. It did not take any longer than 10 minuets. I'm not here to persuade everyone to buy this product like other reviewers. However if you are hesitating of which one and want to get a large drive, go ahead and get this one.

I have a Maxtor 2.5 GB - 8.4 GB hard drive as well as this one and the 2 older ones have never needed to be sent in for repairs. I've had the 2.5 for a little over 3 yrs now and the 8.4 for just under 2 years. Compared to the 10GB Western Digital I have which needed repairs only 2 months after I bought it, I think Maxtor's reliability holds up pretty well. Of course, not every drive can be perfect off the line, but I think for the most part the majority of people who use Maxtor will be satisfied with their investment.

Now I sound like a commercial. But it is true. I have five computers in my home office, with a variety of hard drives. Over the past few years I have had 2 drives fail on me. Both contained crucial data that was lost and Both were made by Western Digital. It makes me wonder how Western Digital can sell their products at such ludicrous prices. I replaced one drive with a Maxtor, and the other with a Quantum Fireball, which is now Maxtor Fireball (Quantum sold out of the hard drive market).Total, I have 2 Maxtor drives (a small 6 gig in my internet server)that have been put through the paces (formatting, installing OS) and both run constantly. I have yet to experience any problems with them and will be purchasing a 100 gig drive for my file server. In summation:No, I will not purchase another Western Digital. Yes, I look forward to yet another reliable "workhorse" from Maxtor. They make products that increase my uptime and decrease data loss.

I worked in PC Support for three years, and I still work on my own computers. I've installed/replaced a lot of drives. I think that the older your system, the greater is the chance that you'll have a problem installing this, or any other large drive. I installed this 40GB Maxtor drive in about 30 minutes, in a 4 year-old Dell 450 PII, running Windows 2000 Pro. That included going to Dell and downloading a BIOS upgrade and installing it. I recommend your having the most current BIOS version you can find for your PC, before you try to install your drive. As you can see - if you read all 40 or so reviews here - there are many variables in drive installation that can cause you to have a bad experience. Better to pay someone a few bucks to have it done, than to beat yourself (and Maxtor or whomever) up with it.

As for the drive itself, it works great. It's pretty quiet - quieter than the 5400 rpm 8.5GB Maxtor that is OEM for the PC. It's faster than the PC's motherboard. The data transfer rate is stated on the box as 133MB/sec, though Amazon specs it as 66MB. Durable? We'll see.... I work with on the order of 500 workstations/servers in my organization, and we rarely have a hard drive crash, regardless of brand. Just assume that they all will crash (eventually they will), and back up your data. I'm happy that I bought this drive. Seems like a good value to me.