Add me to the list that has had a Maxtor drive die. Funny thing is, I have yet to experience any other drive, even ones from 5, almost 6 years ago die, but the ones that have died were the Maxtor ones. Interesting stuff.
Reasonable deal on a SATA hard drive: Hitachi 250GB Serial ATA/150 8MB Buffer Hard Drive - Retail Hard Drive Kit $110 (free shipping), $40 in rebates(2), $70 net http://shop.outpost.com/product/4221934 Shamelessly stolen from http://hot-deals.org/
I know western digital bought Maxtor and you will see there drives being sold cheaply, stay away from them.
Uh no, Seagate bought (is buying) Maxtor. In terms of market share, here is one article I found: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,122254,00.asp Seagate Technology and Western Digital remain atop the market, research shows.
I was looking around for an external drive. It seems like the ones that are within range of what I want to buy are all Maxtor. Can you guys recommend something that will work well for backups? I need about 140 GB or so.
Buy an external enclosure with the interface of your choice (USB 2.0 or firewire or both) and add your own drive. Its cheaper that way and you get exactly the drive size you want. The official external ENCLOSURE thread : http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=400&catid=28&threadid=496281
Great idea. I actually looked at enclosures a while back and thought, "Great idea!!!" .... duh.... I will look into this and pop the 250GB drive I just bought into it. I will now need to look into USB 2 vs. firewire. If speed is the same, I will probably go with USB. Any thoughts?
I use USB for single drive enclosures and firewire for a multibay (4 drive) enclosure I have because firewire supports chaining and USB does not. From everything I've read the speed between the two is really a wash but most PC's have USB 2.0 ports but most desktops do not have firewire ports so that may be a consideration for you. There is a small discussion about this in the thread I linked (see 3. Which interface should I choose, IEEE1394a(firewire400) 1394b(firewire800) USB2.0 or SATA?) If you want to go the multidrive route this ebay seller has a pretty good offer which is nearly identical to one that I put together on my own (parts purchased separately): http://cgi.ebay.com/4-BAY-FIREWIRE-...Z8782831038QQcategoryZ167QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Each drive bay has its own removable caddy (with a separate fan) so you can swap drives as you need to. This unit is both USB and firewire (I went firewire only). http://www.cooldrives.com/ has a lot of cool stuff but its a bit pricey IMO.
I cancelled my order for the WD 250. I was lucky it didn't ship. I went with this deal instead: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...ffiliateID=Es5Ekr9eEBk-PbD9Mx7VAL41ZOy5Nmctfg It gives me a Seagate 250GB in an enclosure that is both firewire and USB 2.0 ready. There is a rebate of $50 until the end of the month. The whole package costs $108 delivered. The drive is a bit slower than a SATA or a 10,000 rpm drive, but the USB 2.0 interface limits the transfer rate anyway, so why bother. I can always upgrade the drive later.