We have over 200 40GB maxtor hard drives in the field and we have had over a 10% failure rate

Drives were installed from March 2001 to to December 2003

Failures started September 2003 - some lasted only weeks or days

Different machines - maxtor says there is no problem but our supplier stopped selling maxtor because of their high return rate - maxtor says there is no bad batch and if there was we are talking about drives over 2 or 3 years so it would be the entire line - not just a few

Has anyone had similar problems with maxtor?

Thanks

I have heard also about problems with maxtor. When I was buying a new drive I read reviews on newegg.com about the same problems with maxtor. That was about 1 1/2 yrs ago. But the drive was the same size - 40 GB. All I would say is that if there is a doubt, there is no doubt..

I'v been using Maxtor for about 5 years now,

Yes that was was when 4GiG was popular, LOL
It's a good company but the 40GIG has a problem, some do fail, What kind of problems are you getting exactly?

The RISC we run have 20 80GIG Maxtor HD with no prob so far for the last 2 years, we skiped the 40's took the loss in cost and made it up in two years.

The problem I'm hearing about is :
1. no motion, burned out stilist, that just tells me contamination.

2. bad secors, missing data.

3. booting problems, shuttdown

4 power problems with the 7200rpm pss

5. noisy HD

See if there is a recall on them
Sorry I can't help anymore

MagikPoo... OUT!

:'( Sadly I have a tragic maxtor 40gb story to relate...
We bought one of these last week thinking it was a decent deal at $80,so when we had it mounted/installed and the overlay for dos and windows installed all seemed well excepting some problems with shutting down. Then three days later I had some more memory to install on the mobo and had to take out all my cards etc,which I did. The memory worked fine but when I got windows (98) loaded my mouse cursor froze in place but I could still use it. I reinstalled windows after running norton and all seemed well.
So ANYWAY then I run defrag and go to bed and the next day it gets a little use in the afternoon and at 5:15 or so it fails completely, BIOS is failing to recognize it, and it's still spinning (loudly as is it's way), needless to say after reading these previous posts it is going straight back to the store to be exchanged for something of equal value :P retail value that is!

My advice for anyone involved with one of these drives is to either spend 5 hours jumping through maxtor's hoops to get a warranty replacement of equal or inferior quality at cost to self for shipping, OR take it straight back to the store where you purchased it and demand to know why they foul their reputations with such unreliable shoddy merchandise and present your receipt promptly; demanding that they right this wrong or lose your business (who cares at 80$ right but for those of you buying 100's of hdd this could really leverage this brand out of biz... b.t.w I have not had good experiences with their other brand Quantum Hdd's either).

(RAnt Rant Rant RAnt RaNT raNT!) >:(

I just had a 30Gb Maxton HD fail, totally refused to boot, tried on three systems and dead. It was almost a year old, just inside warranty and the first HD I've had fail. So I had failed to back up as often as I should and lost a week's work. Lesson learned. Won't buy Maxtor again, but I will back up often. That was my life there :'(

You see was I right?
Or was I right?

Shame too they use to be such a better company.
I use to see Maxtor sales reps all ove the place, If you had a problem they were right here, not anymore.

Well that's what you get when you skimp on quality and attention to detail.

MagikPoo with a tear in his eye :'(

Just in case you haven't found out by this time, these are bad drives -- they are thinner than normal drives and therefore are prone to overheating. We've been ghosting them to new drives using ghost32 and then returning them for credit. It's much easier than waiting for them to die.