Maxtor or Seagate 300gig HD ?

noblues · 03-10-2005, 04:35 PM

I cant make up my mind which 300gig HD to buy ...
Maxtor or Seagate ?

Maxtor has a 16Mb buffer and standard warranty, but the Seagate has a 8Mb buffer but a whopping 5 year warranty ... The prices are about the same, around £120 .... as is the access time and data transfer rate ...

Anyone got any experience of these drives and their operating temps; quiteness; reliability etc ...??

Will I notice the difference between a 16/8 Mb buffer ?

Worren · 03-10-2005, 04:50 PM

If you had posted this last week I would have recommended the Seagate. For the longest time Maxtors weren't all that reliable. I keep detailed records in my computer store and was going through the call back report and found some shocking data. Western Digital which I specified had the highest failure rate followed by Seagate. Maxtor to my complete surprise had the lowest failure rate - by far. So going by that real time data I'd say go with the Maxtor.
I've also noticed that the Maxtors are extremely quiet. All three brands put out about the same amount of heat. You can get a hard drive cooler for not much money if you're worried about it.

**johnwill** · 03-10-2005, 05:03 PM

Given the fact that the Maxtor has a one year warranty, and the Seagate has a 5 year warranty, all things being equal I'd buy the Seagate.

noblues · 03-10-2005, 05:32 PM

Thanks .....

I'm not sure of the 5 year Seagate Warranty is really as good as it sounds ... the reality in a couple of years a drive twice the capacity will be around for the same price and it wouldn't be worth even under warranty replacing such an old drive ....

Worren - intersting your stats on Maxtors (and the silent running of them)... some of the stuff on the web is very misleading on reliability stats, I'm sure Maxtor is a well known established barnd and their drives are going u/s all the time ......

Will I notice the difference between a 16 and 8Mb buffer ?

03-10-2005, 06:22 PM

Hi,

My two cents worth. Yes, there is a difference between the buffers. However, when the buffer grows in size, it is not proportional. Otherwise, a 2mb buffer is so small that you will notice a great difference between that and an 8mb buffer. You won't notice a great difference (although there is) in the buffer of an 8mb and a 16mb unless you do very large applications that are not done in normal computer use. All this is my opinion.

As far as Maxtor (which I have mostly used up until this year), I do not agree with their reliability anymore. They used to be tops, but we have had so many of them go bad lately that I am now opting for either WD or Seagate. There was a steady stream of UPS from my place to Maxtor in recent times when they had the 3 year warranty..

One other thing, did you notice while Seagate and others have upped their warranties to a 3 year warrant? At the same time Maxtor has dropped their 3 year warranty and now has the 1 year warranty. They are the only ones limiting their warranty now. Want to know why, because I have had to have so many of those Maxtors on the three year warranty replaced that they can't afford to keep doing it since their drives are not reliable. The recent ones I have had run about a year and a half and die.

Boy, I love these personal opinion things. That is my two cents worth.

noblues · 03-11-2005, 04:31 AM

Thanks for all the advice ....

Its pointing towards the Seagate .... although the Maxtor on paper is better (buffer and quiet) ... Seagate offering a 5 year warranty must say something about their reliabity ... interesting that Mxtor have gone from 3->1 year warranty ... a sign their !

Worren · 03-11-2005, 04:34 AM

I too love opinions. Everybody has one and most are worth listening to. As a computer dealer you can get into "partnerships" with most hardware companies. I actually lost so much money on WD drives that I dropped them. They didn't even care. As with many small operations, I build enough into the price for a maximum of 2 service calls. After that I start losing money. WD and to a point Seagate are not helping my bottom line. For some reason the landlord doesn't understand that. Years a go Maxtor bought out Connor and combined the products. For a long time I considered them trash but in the past year I've had customers actually specify Maxtors in their builds. They seem most reliable if kept cool and I stick by the figures I posted earlier.
Buffer size is not that important as mark stated. Your performance will not skyrocket simply because the data held in the buffer can be accessed only as fast as the bus speed. The only thing I know of on the market is a rich man's toy, the Pentium4 Extreme Edition. It has an L3 cache and internal logic. It is noticeable but it is also extremely expensive.

noblues · 03-11-2005, 05:23 AM

Rang my local discount supplier today, who dont have any 300gigs in stock .... but have the Seagate 250gig for £90inc ...

Both the Maxtor and Seagate 250 specs are about the same, ie. both buffers 8Mb ....

With Seagate offering 5 year warranty its a no brainer now ...

(It seems you hit the expenentional curve buying HD capacity ... for the extra 50gigs 350->300 and extra 20% in capacity the cost is an extra £42% !!!).

Thanks for all the advice ...

Worren · 03-11-2005, 05:59 AM

Sounds like you made an intelligent decision. Good luck with your new setup. I will tell you a trick I use when a customer is noise conscious. Home centers sell sheets of dense rubber insulation. It's almost like a foam. Don't block any air intakes but cut it to an exact fit and glue it securely to the top of the drive. It will help with the noise while the foam design will allow heat to escape. Also, small rubber washers on the mounting screws between the drive and the drive bay will help too.

crazijoe · 03-11-2005, 06:06 AM

OK, My 2 cents.
I have built sold and mantained computers for the past 20 years. All just go back a year or two with my experience on performance and reliability.
1) Seagate. I have had the best reliability with the newer Seagate drives (Barracuda IV & V). Their Barracuda III were really bad (the ones with the rubber skin).
2) Maxtor. I have had more than enough bad Maxtor drives. An their performance wasn't what I was expecting.
3) Western Digital. Probably the best perfomance drive on the market. With that performance, you sacrifice reliability. I'm not sure their quality is as good as it used to be.
4) Hitachi/IBM. I have used a LOT of these drives. Basically because of the price. Their RMA process wasn't that pleasant when you went through IBM, but is alot better now that you go through Hitachi. Their reliability isn't as good as Seagate but better than Maxtor or WD.
5) Samsung (the underdog). Samsung is very impressive to me. I was very reluctant to buy any more of their drives because of a batch I had gotten a couple years back. I had a 25% failure rate with the batch (20 drives, all new, no refurbs). Hearing the rave reviews on their newer Spinpoint line I'd decided to try another batch (10). I've sold all the computers they were in (6 months ago) and haven't had a come back (because of the drive).

Conclusion: I'm not that picky. I still get drives from all manufacturers because I look at the price. But seeing Maxtor only has a year warranty, I doubt that I will be purchasing any more of their drives. When I sell a computer, I have to be able to back it up. A customer will rather hear you say "the hard drive will not cost you anything because it's still under warranty" than "a new hard drive is $100 because the old drive only had a year warranty"

noblues · 03-11-2005, 08:35 AM

I've bought the Seagate now .... the shop also claimed Seagate to be a better drive than the Maxtor (and they stocked both makes) ...

I'll let you know how I got in with it .....

Do larger drives generate more heat than smaller ones ?

I am debating about fitting a HD fan to my new 250 gig ...... I did this on my old 120gig becuase it seemed to run very hot, but see in drive specs they are good to 60c ... plus my later case has a good fan drawing air straight over the master HD ...

Do HD fans increase HD life ?? Another impossible question no doubt ....

crazijoe · 03-11-2005, 08:42 AM

The case fan blowing air over the HDD should be sufficient. HDD fans are fine but I do not like the excessive noise. I also have concerns about vibration created from the fans attached to the HDD, it may contribute to a shorten lifespan.

03-11-2005, 08:55 AM

Hi,

Not to pile on, but I agree with CraziJoe on both the assessment of drives and the cooling issue. I don't like excessive fans at all and find in most cases they are not needed. What gets me is that some come on here and say I have 12 case fans as if a badge of honor. Even then, their temps are not any better than a two or three fans in other computers. Too many fans create turbulance instead of a steady flow of air front to back.

TwistedBard · 03-11-2005, 10:13 AM

Well.. unlike mark, I'm in a piling on sort of mood! LOL.

I am all about my computer being cool. My processor tends to run at 25-28 degrees Celsius when resting and goes up to 32-35 when I'm busy saving the world from those evil terrorists in CS:Source. You don't accomplish efficient system cooling by throwing a fan at every piece of equipment. As mark suggested, you need a good flow of air through your case to move cool air in and warm air efficiently out of the case.

In most cases that requires very few fans (two or three at most) and attention to wire routing, fan placement and the overall design of your case. If the air can move unimpeded from the front of your case to the back with a quick driveby of your processor to pick up the warm air from there, that's all you need to worry about.

An interesting thing to try, if you've got a window in your case, is take a stick of incense or something that will make some smoke (i wouldn't suggest cigarettes just because I don't want my computer to smell like that LOL) and put it near your computer's intake fans and watch it as it flows through the case. It will give you a good idea of whether anything is creating unecessary turbulence and help you identify whether you can route your wires differently or move a card or drive to improve flow.

**johnwill** · 03-11-2005, 02:57 PM

I've never felt I had a need for any special cooling for hard disks since my 10K RPM SCSI days. I have tons of hard drives in all sorts of configurations, and I never give any thought to adding a fan just for the hard disks. I do make sure they're mounted with space between them for some convection cooling, but that's about it.

My dead HD survey in my closet, four WD's, two Maxtors, one Seagate, and one IBM.

noblues · 03-14-2005, 05:42 AM

My new Seagate 250gig HD is now installed and running smoothly ...

It seems to run a lot cooler than my old WD 120gig drive, and quieter .... no complaints so far ...

(Twisted & Johnwill - I had put a HD coolers on a WD in my old machine, and I think you are right that they just move the hot air around the case instead of expelling it ....'ll run this one without ...)

Glad I went for the Seagate instead of the Maxtor .... (especially when I read a thread today on here about a new Maxtor failing).

Seagates FIVE year warranty is peace of mind, if nothing else !

03-10-2005, 04:35 PM	#1 (permalink)
noblues Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 46 OS: Win XP	Maxtor or Seagate 300gig HD ? I cant make up my mind which 300gig HD to buy ... Maxtor or Seagate ? Maxtor has a 16Mb buffer and standard warranty, but the Seagate has a 8Mb buffer but a whopping 5 year warranty ... The prices are about the same, around £120 .... as is the access time and data transfer rate ... Anyone got any experience of these drives and their operating temps; quiteness; reliability etc ...?? Will I notice the difference between a 16/8 Mb buffer ?

03-10-2005, 04:50 PM	#2 (permalink)
Worren Pop-a-Top Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Georgia Posts: 222 OS: Vista Ultimate 64 Bit Sp1 My System	If you had posted this last week I would have recommended the Seagate. For the longest time Maxtors weren't all that reliable. I keep detailed records in my computer store and was going through the call back report and found some shocking data. Western Digital which I specified had the highest failure rate followed by Seagate. Maxtor to my complete surprise had the lowest failure rate - by far. So going by that real time data I'd say go with the Maxtor. I've also noticed that the Maxtors are extremely quiet. All three brands put out about the same amount of heat. You can get a hard drive cooler for not much money if you're worried about it. Last edited by Worren; 03-10-2005 at 04:51 PM.

03-10-2005, 05:03 PM	#3 (permalink)
johnwill Manager, Networking Forums Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: S.E. Pennsylvania, US Posts: 41,762 OS: Windows 7, XP-Pro, Vista, Linux Blog Entries: 1	Given the fact that the Maxtor has a one year warranty, and the Seagate has a 5 year warranty, all things being equal I'd buy the Seagate. __________________ If TSF has helped you, Tell us about it! or Donate to help keep the site up! Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience

03-10-2005, 05:32 PM	#4 (permalink)
noblues Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 46 OS: Win XP	re Thanks ..... I'm not sure of the 5 year Seagate Warranty is really as good as it sounds ... the reality in a couple of years a drive twice the capacity will be around for the same price and it wouldn't be worth even under warranty replacing such an old drive .... Worren - intersting your stats on Maxtors (and the silent running of them)... some of the stuff on the web is very misleading on reliability stats, I'm sure Maxtor is a well known established barnd and their drives are going u/s all the time ...... Will I notice the difference between a 16 and 8Mb buffer ?

03-11-2005, 06:06 AM	#10 (permalink)
crazijoe Registered User Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Omaha, The Center of the Universe Posts: 7,632 OS: WinXP, Win2K3 My System	OK, My 2 cents. I have built sold and mantained computers for the past 20 years. All just go back a year or two with my experience on performance and reliability. 1) Seagate. I have had the best reliability with the newer Seagate drives (Barracuda IV & V). Their Barracuda III were really bad (the ones with the rubber skin). 2) Maxtor. I have had more than enough bad Maxtor drives. An their performance wasn't what I was expecting. 3) Western Digital. Probably the best perfomance drive on the market. With that performance, you sacrifice reliability. I'm not sure their quality is as good as it used to be. 4) Hitachi/IBM. I have used a LOT of these drives. Basically because of the price. Their RMA process wasn't that pleasant when you went through IBM, but is alot better now that you go through Hitachi. Their reliability isn't as good as Seagate but better than Maxtor or WD. 5) Samsung (the underdog). Samsung is very impressive to me. I was very reluctant to buy any more of their drives because of a batch I had gotten a couple years back. I had a 25% failure rate with the batch (20 drives, all new, no refurbs). Hearing the rave reviews on their newer Spinpoint line I'd decided to try another batch (10). I've sold all the computers they were in (6 months ago) and haven't had a come back (because of the drive). Conclusion: I'm not that picky. I still get drives from all manufacturers because I look at the price. But seeing Maxtor only has a year warranty, I doubt that I will be purchasing any more of their drives. When I sell a computer, I have to be able to back it up. A customer will rather hear you say "the hard drive will not cost you anything because it's still under warranty" than "a new hard drive is $100 because the old drive only had a year warranty" __________________ Microsoft MCSA + Messaging, MVP, A+, Network+ http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b3...other/Help.jpg Do you want a real Republican? HDD diagnostic tools / HDD data recovery software

03-10-2005, 06:22 PM	#5 (permalink)
mark3567 Guest Posts: n/a OS:	Hi, My two cents worth. Yes, there is a difference between the buffers. However, when the buffer grows in size, it is not proportional. Otherwise, a 2mb buffer is so small that you will notice a great difference between that and an 8mb buffer. You won't notice a great difference (although there is) in the buffer of an 8mb and a 16mb unless you do very large applications that are not done in normal computer use. All this is my opinion. As far as Maxtor (which I have mostly used up until this year), I do not agree with their reliability anymore. They used to be tops, but we have had so many of them go bad lately that I am now opting for either WD or Seagate. There was a steady stream of UPS from my place to Maxtor in recent times when they had the 3 year warranty.. One other thing, did you notice while Seagate and others have upped their warranties to a 3 year warrant? At the same time Maxtor has dropped their 3 year warranty and now has the 1 year warranty. They are the only ones limiting their warranty now. Want to know why, because I have had to have so many of those Maxtors on the three year warranty replaced that they can't afford to keep doing it since their drives are not reliable. The recent ones I have had run about a year and a half and die. Boy, I love these personal opinion things. That is my two cents worth.

03-11-2005, 04:31 AM	#6 (permalink)
noblues Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 46 OS: Win XP	Thanks for all the advice .... Its pointing towards the Seagate .... although the Maxtor on paper is better (buffer and quiet) ... Seagate offering a 5 year warranty must say something about their reliabity ... interesting that Mxtor have gone from 3->1 year warranty ... a sign their !

03-11-2005, 04:34 AM	#7 (permalink)
Worren Pop-a-Top Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Georgia Posts: 222 OS: Vista Ultimate 64 Bit Sp1 My System	I too love opinions. Everybody has one and most are worth listening to. As a computer dealer you can get into "partnerships" with most hardware companies. I actually lost so much money on WD drives that I dropped them. They didn't even care. As with many small operations, I build enough into the price for a maximum of 2 service calls. After that I start losing money. WD and to a point Seagate are not helping my bottom line. For some reason the landlord doesn't understand that. Years a go Maxtor bought out Connor and combined the products. For a long time I considered them trash but in the past year I've had customers actually specify Maxtors in their builds. They seem most reliable if kept cool and I stick by the figures I posted earlier. Buffer size is not that important as mark stated. Your performance will not skyrocket simply because the data held in the buffer can be accessed only as fast as the bus speed. The only thing I know of on the market is a rich man's toy, the Pentium4 Extreme Edition. It has an L3 cache and internal logic. It is noticeable but it is also extremely expensive.

03-11-2005, 05:23 AM	#8 (permalink)
noblues Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 46 OS: Win XP	Rang my local discount supplier today, who dont have any 300gigs in stock .... but have the Seagate 250gig for £90inc ... Both the Maxtor and Seagate 250 specs are about the same, ie. both buffers 8Mb .... With Seagate offering 5 year warranty its a no brainer now ... (It seems you hit the expenentional curve buying HD capacity ... for the extra 50gigs 350->300 and extra 20% in capacity the cost is an extra £42% !!!). Thanks for all the advice ...

03-11-2005, 05:59 AM	#9 (permalink)
Worren Pop-a-Top Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Georgia Posts: 222 OS: Vista Ultimate 64 Bit Sp1 My System	Sounds like you made an intelligent decision. Good luck with your new setup. I will tell you a trick I use when a customer is noise conscious. Home centers sell sheets of dense rubber insulation. It's almost like a foam. Don't block any air intakes but cut it to an exact fit and glue it securely to the top of the drive. It will help with the noise while the foam design will allow heat to escape. Also, small rubber washers on the mounting screws between the drive and the drive bay will help too.

03-11-2005, 08:35 AM	#11 (permalink)
noblues Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 46 OS: Win XP	I've bought the Seagate now .... the shop also claimed Seagate to be a better drive than the Maxtor (and they stocked both makes) ... I'll let you know how I got in with it ..... Do larger drives generate more heat than smaller ones ? I am debating about fitting a HD fan to my new 250 gig ...... I did this on my old 120gig becuase it seemed to run very hot, but see in drive specs they are good to 60c ... plus my later case has a good fan drawing air straight over the master HD ... Do HD fans increase HD life ?? Another impossible question no doubt ....

03-11-2005, 08:42 AM	#12 (permalink)
crazijoe Registered User Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Omaha, The Center of the Universe Posts: 7,632 OS: WinXP, Win2K3 My System	The case fan blowing air over the HDD should be sufficient. HDD fans are fine but I do not like the excessive noise. I also have concerns about vibration created from the fans attached to the HDD, it may contribute to a shorten lifespan. __________________ Microsoft MCSA + Messaging, MVP, A+, Network+ http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b3...other/Help.jpg Do you want a real Republican? HDD diagnostic tools / HDD data recovery software

03-11-2005, 08:55 AM	#13 (permalink)
mark3567 Guest Posts: n/a OS:	Hi, Not to pile on, but I agree with CraziJoe on both the assessment of drives and the cooling issue. I don't like excessive fans at all and find in most cases they are not needed. What gets me is that some come on here and say I have 12 case fans as if a badge of honor. Even then, their temps are not any better than a two or three fans in other computers. Too many fans create turbulance instead of a steady flow of air front to back.

03-11-2005, 10:13 AM	#14 (permalink)
TwistedBard Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Nort Carolina Posts: 122 OS: XP SP2	Well.. unlike mark, I'm in a piling on sort of mood! LOL. I am all about my computer being cool. My processor tends to run at 25-28 degrees Celsius when resting and goes up to 32-35 when I'm busy saving the world from those evil terrorists in CS:Source. You don't accomplish efficient system cooling by throwing a fan at every piece of equipment. As mark suggested, you need a good flow of air through your case to move cool air in and warm air efficiently out of the case. In most cases that requires very few fans (two or three at most) and attention to wire routing, fan placement and the overall design of your case. If the air can move unimpeded from the front of your case to the back with a quick driveby of your processor to pick up the warm air from there, that's all you need to worry about. An interesting thing to try, if you've got a window in your case, is take a stick of incense or something that will make some smoke (i wouldn't suggest cigarettes just because I don't want my computer to smell like that LOL) and put it near your computer's intake fans and watch it as it flows through the case. It will give you a good idea of whether anything is creating unecessary turbulence and help you identify whether you can route your wires differently or move a card or drive to improve flow. __________________ The TwistedBard ASUS A8V Deluxe AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512MB RAM GeForce 2Ti (old school, man! LOL) 80 GB WD Caviar SE SATA HDD

03-11-2005, 02:57 PM	#15 (permalink)
johnwill Manager, Networking Forums Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: S.E. Pennsylvania, US Posts: 41,762 OS: Windows 7, XP-Pro, Vista, Linux Blog Entries: 1	I've never felt I had a need for any special cooling for hard disks since my 10K RPM SCSI days. I have tons of hard drives in all sorts of configurations, and I never give any thought to adding a fan just for the hard disks. I do make sure they're mounted with space between them for some convection cooling, but that's about it. My dead HD survey in my closet, four WD's, two Maxtors, one Seagate, and one IBM. __________________ If TSF has helped you, Tell us about it! or Donate to help keep the site up! Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience

03-14-2005, 05:42 AM	#16 (permalink)
noblues Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 46 OS: Win XP	My new Seagate 250gig HD is now installed and running smoothly ... It seems to run a lot cooler than my old WD 120gig drive, and quieter .... no complaints so far ... (Twisted & Johnwill - I had put a HD coolers on a WD in my old machine, and I think you are right that they just move the hot air around the case instead of expelling it ....'ll run this one without ...) Glad I went for the Seagate instead of the Maxtor .... (especially when I read a thread today on here about a new Maxtor failing). Seagates FIVE year warranty is peace of mind, if nothing else !