Customer Reviews

Maxtor L01P120 7200 RPM 120 GB Internal Hard Drive

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

There is nothing spectacular about this drive, but nothing particularly bad either. The software they provide does not work correctly with Windows XP, but aside from that it's a good drive to get if you need to upgrade your existing system.

Speed - It's not going to set any records, but it's not slow either. It seems to fall in the middle of the pack for performance benchmarks according to the various websites that have evaluated this product.

Noise - Again, it's not the quietest drive on the market. In fact I've seen other models of Maxtor drives that were practically noise-free. This one you can hear slight chattering as it accesses the data, but I can barely hear it above the noise of the various cooling fans in my PC. In short, you would need to have supersonic hearing to be upset by the noise this one makes, but there are quieter drives out there.

Heat - Once again, it's in the middle of the road. Most of the drives out today are generating a lot more heat than the older drives. The reputable hardware testing sites I've checked put this in the middle of the pack. If you have a standard computer case and multiple hard drives, most likely there is very little space between them. I would recommend getting a quality ball bearing cooling fan for this and any drive if you want to extend its life, but if you're installing it in a cramped space with little airflow, then a cooling fan is a necessity due to the heat it generates.

Quite frankly, most of today's drives are quick enough and quiet enough that, with the exception of a few performance models, it's hard to tell any difference between them unless you're a serious computer gearhead. The only areas left to compete are in reliability, customer service, and software. I haven't had to deal with their customer service, and obviously I can't rate the reliability of this new purchase, but I can comment on the software.

The drive comes with Maxtor's MaxBlast hard drive cloning and utility software. This is the one area that they could've beat the competition and given me a reason to bump it up to four stars. Unfortunately, this software proved to be so much a disappointment that I'd recommend you do not use it. (In fact, it's so bad I should probably should bump this down to two stars.)

Right off the bat I knew I was in trouble as I have a separate Promise UDMA controller built into my ASUS A7V motherboard. MaxBlast couldn't detect it and simply crashed every time I tried booting it in DOS mode. DOS mode is the preferred and generally less error prone method of cloning an existing hard drive, but since I couldn't get it to work that way I attempted cloning my drive running MaxBlast from Windows XP. First off, it took over two hours to copy a 40GB drive over to this one (why?) Secondly, MaxBlast gives you options to set your partitions when you're formatting from scratch, but it didn't give me any options to set my partitions when I cloned my existing drive. It forces you to accept one partition that's the same size as your old drive, then creates a second partition for the remaining space. Not what I wanted. Finally, I would've accepted the previous two annoyances if it would've copied XP correctly. It did copy XP and I can boot up, but since the transfer I have run into all kinds of problems with Explorer crashing frequently, the system restore function no longer working, and other annoyances. Add that I've had to reregister some of my existing programs and it's apparent this is definitely not a clone of my old drive.

So there you go. Like the review title says, it's your basic hard drive with about the same specs as other drives out there. If the price is right and you just need extra storage space, it's worth buying. However, if you need to transfer data from an existing drive, plan on paying extra for some cloning software that actually works.

Hope the review helped.

For those who need MASSIVE storage, it's time to step up to 120 gigabytes!

Depending on what kind of user you are, this drive is amazing.

If you're planning on maybe getting on the internet and using your computer to write documents, or do your taxes, you probably DO NOT need this much drive... but for hard-core users, this drive will suit you right down to the ground.

I actually moved to this drive from an 80 gig drive that I kept tapping out. I use Windows XP on a split partition with Red Hat Linux 8.0... each O/S (Operating System) takes up some space by themselves, and after I get going with loading up my CDs, Movies, Games, etc... I'm out of space.

I don't even bother with my entertainment center anymore, as I have all my media on my computer. As I tend to move around a lot, I find that not having to wait to unpack all my stuff to find the exact CD I want to listen to has made life pretty sweet!

This drive performs well enough, seems to be holding up okay, and the access time is fairly decent.

If you're looking for something a little smaller, Seagate's 80 Gig Barracuda has been an outstanding drive for me (I have 2, and I've used them both hard for the last 8 months or so). If you really don't have any huge storage needs, I also have had a lot of good experience with the 30 Gigabyte Maxtor drives. I have one right now that has been a rock for the last 2 years. I'm using it now as a back-up for important files!

copy my 40 gig to the 120 no problems.the enclosed booklet and software made it very easy to do it.the whole operation took 75minutes the only thing i had to do was turn nortons back on and put my aol password back in , it ask for it so i put it back in.very minor things to redo.its like a new pc again boots up faster hard drive is not as noisy.my first time to try this.maxtor makes it a worry free process.

It's a decent hard drive for a great bargain usually. One of the complaints I have is the noise, since it can get loud and rather annoying if you do not want to be disturbed.
One of the fixes for the noise is apparently the AMSET utility (search for it on the Maxtor website) which lets you toggle the noise level (at the price of search speed).

If you can find one of these for [a good price] per GB, snap it up. I'm running a Dell with Windows XP and adding this drive was a snap with Maxtor's setup disc. Comes with everything you need. Runs fast enough for video editing, and very quiet, too. I've added Maxtor drives to 4 different PCs and never had a moment's problem.

The drive was well packaged and with a reasonable price, given the capacity I got. I used partitionmagic when I upgraded my windows 2000 to this new drive. It runs smoothly and without much noice.

The problem I encountered was that after 40 days of use, it suddenly failed to be recognized by the operating system, as if the hard drive had been disconnected from the computer. If I switch the computer off and turn it back on again, it may work again but it may fail after a few munites of running. I finally returned it to Maxtor because it was still within the warranty period. I just hope this is not a design flaw.

I use win XP.
No problem in installation.
No problem recognizing the volume.

I really have no complaint about it, works just like it should. Use it mainly for backup and movie storage, so don't really care about how fast it is, but of course I try to go with 8mb and ATA133. $2/1GB would be a good price for this. Refered to amazon by WhoSave coom.
Recommendation: get a external HD enclosure for your old hard drive, don't toss it out, just use it as a USB drive.

I have had this drive for about a year with no complaints. Here is the text from a review on the NewEgg website: "For those who are having problems with the noise of the Hard Drive. Please go to Maxtors web site and download the AMSET utility. It works. I purchased this Hard Drive and it was so loud I was ready to return it. I downloaded the software from maxtor to an A: diskette and ran it. You have options to choose if you want quiet, fast or the Acoustic management turned off.I chose quiet and the Hard Drive is extremely quiet and still runs at warp speed. Maxtor rocks!!!"

I cannot imagine why these reviewers are having difficulty with installation. I do not use the Maxtor software, but instead let Windows XP install the drive. I've installed five Maxtor Drives in the last two years with no problems. One of them did fail after about six months, but Maxtor replaced it in less than a week.

My only complaint is that it runs quite hot. Don't sandwich it in between other drives and it should be fine, though.

Also, it doesn't come with mounting brackets, yet the editorial says it does.