Advantages: fast writing speed, whisper quiet motor, incredibly easy installation
Disadvantages: Size and weight.

...This is a very Good Drive..... I bought this external hard drive about four years back. for one reason, i was runing out of space on my laptops hard drive, plus, if my laptop were to crash i didn't want to lose all of my data. Let's start with the setup. Setting this drive up could not be any easier or quicker than it was. If you are really into quick installation, then this takes the cake. You simply plug the drive into the mains, plug it into your computer, turn it on, and voila! It does the same as a memory stick, so you can just instantly move all of your data onto the disk. Also, if you want, you can install the maxtor software, which makes it so you can back all of your data up onto the computer at the touch of one button, if your computer crashes and your data is lost. The write speed onto the disk is also quite... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Very fast, reliable and quiet... and Cheap!
Disadvantages: Absolutely nothing!

...Maxtor have been there since the beginning of the home PC - They were making 100MB hard disks 12 years ago that are just as good as their 400GB+ disks today. I have always liked the combination of price and reliability Maxtor drives have offered. You can pick up a Maxtor disk for £10-£15 cheaper on average than you can other manufacturers. My first Maxtor disk was a monstrously big 10GB disk back in 1999, and since then I have truly been hooked. Never once has a Maxtor disk failed on me, or had any indication of doing so. SMART status on all of my drives has always been 100%, and that 10GB disk is still happily sat in a USB enclosure on top of my PC. Anyway, with the 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax 9 I have been using as my Primary disk for over 3 years getting a bit on the full side, I decided it was time for an upgrade. I wanted... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Fast, Larrge Capacity, Price
Disadvantages: Compatibility

...-pluggable, so if you are using serial-ATA connectors, you can plug in these whilst in Windows. Obviously you can’t unplug/re-plug the legacy Molex power connectors, unless you want to blow up your drive, only hot-plug the Serial ATA ones. Installation of the drive was as simple as any other SATA drive, easy and quick. Testing Test system Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2600+ @ 2.08Ghz Barton core, 333Mhz FSB Motherboard: Gigabyte 7NNXP Socket 462, nForce2 ultra 400 SPP Memory 512Mb Dual channel Corsair PC2700 1st Hard drive: 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Time to transfer 1GB of test files (write): 22.18 seconds Time to transfer 1GB of test files (read): 22.05 seconds I also thought you might be interested in the temperatures of the drive, in testing (uncooled – i.e no fans at room temperature) whilst formatting (under load... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Fast and Silent, Easy SATA installation, Two flavours to choose from
Disadvantages: Dismal performance

...to my anti-virus software. I started to backup the contents of my new hard drive onto the Maxtor, which i had been using as the backup/storage drive. About 5 minutes into the copy operation, and with a good 80GB left on the drive, I got the dreaded blue error screen. Since then, I'm in the same situation I was in before, without the benefit of being to remember exactly what fixed the problem last time. It is usually said that the first time a drive shows problems is the time to ditch the drive. I obviously know that now, but I'm at least grateful that I managed to get an extra three months out of it. However, with the average hard drive lasting in the region of about two and a half years, the performance of this model is nothing short of dismal. My opinion, Maxtor is fine for a basic setup with infrequent use, but certainly... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful