Maxtor's Fluid Dynamic bearing drives

DanU · May 29th, 2002, 09:18 PM

I'm looking to upgrade my HD to an 80GB, 7200 RPM drive. Speed isn't a real big issue, but noise and reliability is. Newegg is offering Maxtor's "Quiet Drive" with fluid bearings. This sounds like just the thing I need (pun intended), but I don't want to buy into unproven technology and end up with an unreliable "Deathstar". Anyone care to share their "Quiet Drive" experiences???

Richard Cranium · May 29th, 2002, 09:32 PM

Ha Ha, this is really a Quantum HD, if it's truly a Maxtor drive, the "Quiet" technology cause slow performance.

I got several of the Quantum's with the Fluid Bearings before Maxtor bought them out.
The Quantum drives with the fluid bearings tested out faster than any other in my stable so far and I have several mfg's of drives.
The one Seagate 7200rpm U series drive has not been installed yet so I cannot vouch for it's performance.

The info is AFAIK as usual.

nunyadam · May 30th, 2002, 03:51 AM

I would think there would be a whole lot less bearing wear on a fluid drive.

otheos · May 30th, 2002, 04:50 AM

The D740X is indeed a Quantum drive, but unlike other drives that use simply acoustic managment to quiet down, there is a specific version of the 740 that comes with fluid bearings. The noise levels are trully mutted.

Acoustic managment suppresses seek times in favor of lower noise and is firmware controllable (software provided to end users by maxtor), and it makes a difference. The fluid bearing drives though, with acoustic managment disabled (fastest seeks) are still quieter than the ball bearings drive with it enabled to max.

Reliability? I wouldn't worry. But if something goes wrong, at least it's a maxtor (best support in market

).

Richard Cranium · May 30th, 2002, 11:51 PM

I must give my experience with Maxtor support.

Socal and Surreal will remember my deal with Maxtor and a Retail box 20g from Staples.

The thing was inoperative, sorta, it wouldn't fdisk or format but would pass some of their silly tests.

5-7 phone calls later I FINALLLY got a RMA.

Then the wait, it took them about 10 weeks to send me the replacement.

No on to Fujitsu.

I got a unit in on trade, it had a 10g Fujitsu HD that was bad.

Fujitsu does NOT make you run ANY tests of any sort.
If you are not happy with the drive, send it to them and you get another.

It arrived promptly, Doc was happy, finally.

)

Tomteriffic · May 31st, 2002, 12:18 AM

Theoretically, the fluid bearings ought to be a whole lot quieter, and I'm looking into that sorta drive for my studio machines.

The new Samsungs are using the same technology, and For What It's Worth, out of four Samsungs I have (bought them way back when because they were so quiet) all four are still running 24/7 in UD machines and I forget they're even there.

They were fast enough for many many simultaneous tracks of 24 bit digital audio despite being 5400 RPM drives (the new ones are 7,200) due to the extremely high areal density on their drive designs (more bytes per square inch). This very high areal density still holds true.

They're the only brand of drives that I've never had a failure on. Go figure....

elroy · June 4th, 2002, 02:53 AM

I to have had good luck with Samsung, but not just their hard drives also their cd-roms, cdrw's and ram. I wouldn't hesitate to buy any Samsung computer products. I've had good luck with Maxtor also but I wouldn't touch Quantum with a 10 foot pole.

otheos · June 4th, 2002, 04:41 AM

Richard, Maxtor's support is now using the "no quibble" process. You don't like it, you send it back with one phone call, and if you opt for advanced RMA you get a NEW drive back a couple of days later. Fujitsu's support is up there too, wish I could say the same for IBM and Seagete...

And those Samsungs re trully nice drives, an option to consider too.

dunbar · June 4th, 2002, 08:11 AM

I was outta the PC loop for a while..... Quantum made a ('nother) lemon? I remember a few 80 meggers in Macintosh IIs which had a head sticking problem: whack the drive and it will spinup. Is this Deathstar thing related?

Maxtor has been good to me so far, no failures within warranty. Had one 850 meg Maxtor die at 3 years plus maybe 4 months, but I didn't want to have a refurbed drive which was less than a gig, so I never bothered to send it in.

WD didn't quibble on a 1.2 gig which died at 2 years, 11 months.

In any case, never had a fluid bearing drive to my knowledge.

Tomteriffic · June 4th, 2002, 07:26 PM

Dunbar, IBM made a series of drives in the Deskstar line that had an extraordinarily high failure rate. No warning, just the "click, click, click" and it's gone. They were the 60GXP series.

To my knowledge the Mac SCSI drives have been fine (I hope so, I have one in one of my Macs) and the later batch of IDE Quantums that wound up in the early IDE/ATA Macs have been fine. My wife has been running one for several years in hers, no problem.