EEK! My Maxtor is a Fujitsu!?

[crazyray]

My first PC was a disaster. Among the problems: not one, but two hard drives died during a short span. They were made by Fujitsu...

Now, three years later, I buy a Maxtor HD (not my first) and it is DOA. I call Maxtor and they arrange a swap, no problem, but I note on the s/n some gibberrish: ...FJTSU...

Is is true? Will I be forced to buy IBM and Western Digital only?

Sorry but this sounds awfully familiar - I built my first about two years ago - fuji 4.3gig - something like that - within 30 days it was toast - took 45 days to get replaced - and I am still not sure it was replaced!

knock on wood - It runs my w2k machine as we speak - but come to think of it - It did not run after the fiasco - I put a western digital in it. that means it has only the last few months on it.

wizofid

[crazyray]

The drive in question is a 5400 RPM 40 GB MAXTOR, or is it?

[ragtop]

Funny you bring it up - my new Maxtor 30G 7200 RPM (retail boxed) came with a big HEWLETT PACKARD sticker on it. Go figure that one.

I generally prefer WD, but I've had good luck with the other Maxtor I've had for about a year. I stay away from Seagate and IBM myself.

[Warthog]

Stay away from IBM??

IBM 60GXP is one of the, if not the most reliable hard drive in existence.

I used to think the 75GXP was like that...alas, I was lead astray. It's definately not bad, just not perfect (I haven't had any troubles in my 1 year of usage, though...).

Warthog

[wyvrn]

I just bought a Western Digital HDD a few months ago. Windows won't let it use DMA mode. So, WD has a DOS utility you can use to setup their HDD for DMA. I ran it and still Windows runs like a dog in DMA mode, much slower than PIO.

Why the hell doesn't WD make their drives like everyone else. One click and a reboot in Windows and DMA is working? I won't buy another one of their drives. Back to IBM and Maxtor for me.

[lost]

personly i have had nothing but bad luck with WD. in the past two years have had 20 some hd's go bad of those 2 were segate(scsi), one was fujitsu(ide) and all the rest were WD(ide) 4gig and bigger.
Of the WD's half of the replacement drives have had to be replaced. I have now replaced most of the WD's with maxtor or ibm's hd's. BTW WD said the problem with so may drives going bad was because i was using linux or had ntfs or fat32, these file type are just too hard on WD's per WD tech.

[MegalosSkylaki]

Maxtor recently merged or bought out some other HDD-maker. Who was that--swap file down again.Anybody know?

hey! You guys scaring me. have two retail Maxtors in boxes waiting for A MACHINE TO HAPPEN. dON'T WANT TO FRY MY FIRST COMPUTER--dang caps lock (no caps lock lite on my mini-wireless).

Nowadays everything is so outsourced even the manufacturer has never even seen ONCE the part it "manufactured".

TECHIMOIDINSEARCHOFHISFIRSTHOMEMADECOMPUTERD G

[ragtop]

Hmmm..... After reading this, I guess there are no good hard drive manufacturers. I guess I'll just have to give up using computers

Warthog - doesn't IBM have a class action suite going against them due to numerous failures of a particular model or models?? I thought they were good drives until I read some info about that lawsuit.

[Socalgal]

Maxtor recently merged or bought out some other HDD-maker

I believe the other HDD maker was Quantum.

[shahani]

Maxtor bought out Quantum. My Maxtor 40GB 5400 works very well since June.

Question of getting a statistically defective drive, thats all.

How lucky do you feel, DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG?

[surreal]

I have had a little 20gig Fugitsu about a year, I have never had problems with it. We all know HD manufacturers that have produced bad drives. IBM, and Maxtor to name a couple.. I think sometimes it's just a shot in the dark

[otheos]

Maxto recetly bought Quantum and some people have found Quantum drives in Maxtor boxes. But that's fine since Quantum always offereed great drives (with the LM+ the best ever IDE drive!).

Now Fujitsu has recently left the retail IDE/desktop market to concentrate on their SCSI segment (which I have to say are very very good!).

Now Fujitsus IDE stock was sold to various people, most of them OEM at low prices and hence there was a boom in Fujitsus drived in prebuilt boxes. Some would carry the Dell/HP/Compaq sticker (especially the latter two). Same goes with other HD manufacturers that sell to these manufacturers and hence people tend to believe that HP and Compaq actually built their own drives (but they don't -anymore).

As for the Fujitsu showing up as a Maxtor RMA, it is very very unlikey unless the RMA was issued by a retailer/reseller rather than Maxtor themselves.

Maxtor now does their CS/RMA themselves and people have to contact them directly (not the retailer).

BTW Maxtor's RMA policy is excellent.

Finally, my experience with Fujitsu drives has been excellent in both scsi and IDE. I still run 4 10GB Fujitsus (RAID 0+1) IDE that are 3 years old. Fujitsu being a high end brand admitedly has overlooked the consumer market and end user support/RMA has not been top notch. Their drives have been though.

[Richard Cranium]

I'd prefer a Fujitsu over a Maxtor anyday.

Had many more bad Maxtors ..

Maxtor put me through 5-6 phone calls and several "tests" before issuing a RMA

Fujitsu does NOT require any phone calls, Tests or other verification the drive is bad other than your assertment that it is faulty.

Maxtor took about 10 weeks to get me my replacement for a New faulty 20gb drive.

Fujitsu took about a week to replace a used 1 year old drive , which would you prefer ?

[crazyray]

One polite phone call, no waiting, and Maxtor had a new drive to me in 3 days. The new one is fine...

I used the drive diagnostic utility they enclose on the MaxBlast floppy that comes with every drive from Maxtor. It gave me an error code which I had available when I called. If you have a problem with a Maxtor drive, be sure to run that utility.

In fairness, Fujitsu was reasonably quick and polite, but again I had run a drive utility (from On-Track) that gave them the info they needed before I called. The fact that the replacement was also DOA was what made me nervous.

I think I'll stick with what I have for a while...

[MaxVal]

Are you people participating in the Storage Review user's poll?
Maybe we can see trends as to which drives are holding up.

Too bad that by the time a trend emerges, the model will USUALLY be obsolete!

MAX