Maxtor DiamondMax D540X user reviews (160GB, ATA-133)

Summary One person on here said that Maxtor has a problem getting them a replacement. I have had one maxtor drive fail out of 300 in a 3 year period. If you secure it with a CC, they will ship you a new one next day. Just put it in the box. Compare that to the 15 of 40 Western Digital driver that have failed in the last year alone. "CLICK CLICK.. I hear a western" I will never again buy anything BUT maxtor!!!!

Summary I now have two failures for two drives. Now they're back-ordered, no replacement a month after getting an RMA, and Maxtor has no idea when they'll be able to ship me a new drive.

Summary Have 2, along with WD 7200 120GB & 100GB. Stores 10 hours of DV each, never dropped a frame. Just keep them defragged. No problems.

Summary In the balance between speed and space I chose storage capacity over speed and am actually impressed with its speed being that I was expecting it to be much slower.

Summary You would never use this massive harddrive as the operating system drive, so u will never realize the diff in speed...It is great, reliable and I have loved it glitch free for months!!!

Summary CNET compared this with similar IBM and WD 120GB which were much faster. CNET failed to divulge the internal transfer rate of the Maxtor, which is more realistic moving major amounts of data.

Summary I haven't tried this latest version of the drive, but I did buy the 60 GB 5400 rpm DiamondMax and have been very happy with it. I believe that, for common desktop applications, 5400 rpm may actually be better than 7200. Why? Lower speed means significantly less friction, which means less noise, less heat, less vibration, and less power, translating to higher reliability not only for the drive, but for the whole system. 5400 rpms = 5.55 milliseconds average latency compared to 4.16 for 7200. Realistically, will you notice the .00133 seconds difference?

Summary Yeah, it it's 160Gb- great! But design flaws make the drive unreliable. Two of my three have failed. I've heard of others being a problem as well. Go with the 120.

Summary After having may raid using IBM "Deathstars" fail. I needed a replacement for my 150 gb raid. So far this drive is working great, installing the ata-133 card was nice an easy.