Maxtor OneTouch II (300GB)

Pros: Fast, Large Capacity, Good Price

Cons: VERY sensitive

Summary: I just wanna settle the score here on behalf of Maxtor. I know a couple of people who have been using this drive for a very long time now, one of whom is a media studies student who keeps litterally hundreds of gigabytes of DV on this, which is critical to his coursework. I myself have been using the kit for about 4 months now and have had no problems. So why do I keep logging onto forums and finding that the Maxtor OneTouch II is taking a hammering? Because the internet is full of noobs is why. Im astonished at some of the things I read in this forum "failed after 3 days", "corrupted data after a month" etc. I simply couldnt figure out why these people were writing these things. Until yesterday that is, when one of my Maxtor OneTouch II owning friends (not the media studies one) knocked the hard drive on its side. Not onto the floor, just onto the desk. Now it doesnt work at all, wont even spin up.

People, listen up. Just because this hard drive is external does not mean you can handle it in the same way as flash media based storage...its still a hard drive inside, it has extremely delicated moving parts. Simply moving the unit while it is switched on and working can cause total failure. This may sound like a bad point, but try using your internal drive and taking it out and shaking it whilst its working on data. The same will happen.

This kit is NOT bad. I cannot stress that enough. The reviews on here are very inaccurate. The kit will fail if you move it whilst its on, or knock it or drop it etc, because its a hard drive and thats what they do. Please people, RTFM