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

...Maxtor are one of the 3 leading hard drive manufacturers in the personal and business computing market at the moment along with Western Digital and Hitachi. They are also the cheapest. Unfortunately, the saying that price doesn't equals quality is true here. Too true. The 160GB version of the DiamondMax Plus9 can be purchased online from around £51.00 onwards. And with the way hard drive prices have fallen recently, that's not bad at all. But as I said, you're getting cheap quality to match the cheap price. The drive itself looks very similar to any other hard drive, and comes in both IDE ATA/133 and SATA 150 flavours, with the SATA ones easier to configure due to their jumperless installations. My personal experience with this drive has been short. I first purchased this drive to use in my first ever custom-built computer... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Larrge Capacity, Price
Disadvantages: Compatibility

...Features Out of the box it looks pretty much like any other Serial ATA drives, although you can tell it is a Maxtor drive (and not just because of the huge label with Maxtor written on it either). Here are the drives full specifications from Maxtor: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Hard disk drive Capacity: 200GB Form factor: 3.5” Interface: Serial ATA 150 Rotational speed: 7200Rpm Buffer size: 8MB cache DPS (Data Protection System) SPS system to resist shock Operating mechanical shock 2ms (G): 60 Non-operating: 300 Quoted average seek time: <= 9.3 ms Quoted average latency: 4.2 ms B per sector/block: 512 Logical CHS: 16,383/16/63 Hot plug capable Weight: 0.63 kg The drive comes with a legacy power connector to cater for most of us who don’t have serial-ATA compliant PSUs yet. Serial ATA is also hot... Read review

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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

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Advantages: Very Cheap, Very Quiet
Disadvantages: Poorly Made, Burn Out Easily

...In my first foray into PC building 5 years ago, I spent a great deal of time researching components and learning to build a system competently and properly. I decided upon a Maxtor Hard Drive, which was a 40Gb DiamondMax model, mainly for it's price (around £20 cheaper than similar models by Samsung, Hitatchi, Seagate, etc). This was a poor decision. Not 4 months after purchase the hard drive failed. A burn out on the IDE controller board on the underside of the disk, blew up the electronics. I was frustrated, but considered myself unlucky at the loss of much of my data. Undeterred, I sent the hard disk back to my retailer and received a new one on warranty. Installed and ready to go, I was happy I'd managed to sort it all out. However, 2 months later the hard-drive failed, this time the motor had burnt out. Right. I pressed my... Read review

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Advantages: fair amount of storage space for price
Disadvantages: Can be a bit noisey at times

...with 80gb Hard drives being the norm in most entry level pc's the price of the 160gb hdd is dropping. If you are looking for a reliable Hard drive for storage of MP3s, video or even gameing then the 160gb will be up your street. The space on the Drive makes it ideal of an entry level "pvr" system. I am currently using one of these as a secondary drive. I have so far managed to record 8hrs of tv to it at decent quality and still have plenty of space left..... The drive Is sata 150 with 8mb cache and 7200rpm spindle. This enables faster reading and writing to the drive. You will need to have a System Board that supports sata 150 or purchase a sata pci card if you want to run the drive in an older machine. You can buy a convetor which will enable you to plug the drive into a normal 40 pin IDE port. Ther is a warning... Read review

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Advantages: Very capacious, Good qaulity, Good value for money
Disadvantages: Not supported properly by most operating systems

...I wanted to buy a Hard Drive that I could trust all my files with. I have had an External Maxtor Hard Drive for a while and I can admit it's taken some abuse, but it still works fine! So I decided to go for Maxtor's 200Gb drive, the DiamondMax Plus 9. I baught the OEM version, it was extremely good value for money, I got it for around £90! But the OEM version comes with no software and little did I realise that such a big drive needed to be specially activated first. I must have spent half an hour tinkering with it un til I took a trip to Maxtor's website and found some software that would set it up for me. And the software worked a treat, except for 1 snag. My ATA drivers couldn't support 200GB and the drive had to be formated to 130GB instead, thats 70GB of valuable space down the pan!! And I am using Windows XP Pro which is one... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Reliable, Quiet
Disadvantages: Heat (but all drives do)

...I have just bought two of these great drives. Having over 20 years of experience with PCs at all levels. I can say that Seagate once ruled the hill, but that was then. For the past 5 years I have been using and today I insist on, Maxtor drives. I own (and still use) 9 drives in my machine (30gigs short of 2 terra's) - they are Maxtor: 40, 80, 160 (ide), 300, 300, 320, 320 (sata). I also have two Western Dig's 200 and 250 (ide) - they're ok I guess... I love my Maxtor drives though (touch wood) I have never had a problem... ever... okay there was one time I drank too much at a LAN party and formatted the wrong drive, and then there were a lot of times I had a problems with the best virus (or handcuff) in the world (i.e. Windows). Advice: I'm a pathetic romantic when it comes to keeping my drives cool (way below 40deg.C) and I think... Read review

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Advantages: Light, cheap and VERY simple to use
Disadvantages: not found those yet

...I bought this last week at Tesco for under £40 so thought 160Gb forvthat price couldn't be bad. we just wanted to back up our photos and music and free a bit of space on our computer. I am not a computer wizz and things have to be reasonably simple. This is SO SIMPLE. Very basic small box-like drive which is also very light so easy to transport around if you want to. it comes with one lead with two USB ports at one end to go into the computer and the other has the point that connects to the hard drive. You connect all the points to the correct places and then it boots itself in and installs without any further ado. No expertise required at all. Any idiot could do it. After that just copy files over or open documents and save to the hard drive which comes up like any other memory stick when you click where you want to "save as... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, quiet and very good.
Disadvantages: None

...I used to use Seagate hard drives but the first one i had corrupted itself and i couldn't access anything, then i thought it must've have been a one off occurrance so i wentto buy another one, but after about a year it burnt itself out. I wasn't very pleased to find out about and since then i gave up on Seagate. I looked around for an ew hard drive and i came across Maxtor, a well known make along with Seagate and Western Digital. I wnet out to buy a 10Gb hard drive and when i first got it i installed and everything was fine. Afte about 18 months it was still going strong with no bad sectors. I didn't like uninstalling things and i found the hard drive soon filled up quickly, so i went to buy another Maxtor hard drive. This time i brought a 25Gb and it's very good. This particular hard drive belongs to the Diamond Max 60 family... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap and versatile disks
Disadvantages: Distinctly mediocre performance by latest standards.

...MAXTOR was formed in 1982 and currently enjoys an annual sales turnover in excess of four billion dollars. Clearly they’re doing something right! Whilst I’ve recently read some rather uncomplimentary comments about MAXSTOR disks which suggest their previously legendary reputation for manufacturing reliable hard disks has taken something of a back seat, I’m pleased to say I’ve not witnessed any such problems. Shortly before I acquired my latest PC – I sought to upgrade one of my ‘back office storage servers’ with an extra disk, specifically the 120Gb DiamondMax Plus 9 ATA/133 model. It cost me around fifty quid at my local PC shop, and at a price of 41p a gig, that is a price comparable to DVD-R media! – with the obvious advantage of being considerably faster, and read-writable to boot! The unit comprises of a ‘bog standard... Read review

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