Advantages: Big, cheap, v. fast, v. good quality, lastest generation
Disadvantages: Spins up a little slowly, but that's to be expected from a 7,200

...I've just bought and installed one of these babies and am very impressed. 7,200 rpm, 30Gb, 2Mb SDRAM cache, <8.5 ms average seek, <1ms track-track seek, 2 platters, 4 heads, UDMA66. Need I say more? Well, I guess a little more - it's very very fast, very quiet, installed without any difficulty. Running on a celeron333a with 298Mb ram, the performance is impressive, applications (including Windows) load quickly and quietly and large data chunks are read quickly. And my motherboard only has a UDMA33 IDE controller! Definitely a very impressive piece of kit, would also be perfect for putting together a RAID array from looking at the stats (check out the manufacturer's website for very detailed information on the drive). Definitely a very viable solution for people looking to expand their storgae space. Although, a few other drives, say... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Larrge Capacity, Price
Disadvantages: Compatibility

...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) the drive managed to hit 50° C... Read review

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Advantages: Price, Speed, Reliability
Disadvantages: Noise

...I have been using this drive for some months now having bought it to augment my then system. I have used Maxtor drives almost exclusively in the past and have found them to be both reliable and fast drives, I have not yet needed to return one, unlike with other brands. Maxtor offer a good range of drives now including SATA and PATA drives (such as this one) with 2mb and 8mb cache sizes. I opted for the lower as I had no need for the slight improvement in speed as this drive was only ever intended as a media storage drive. The pricing of these drives and indeed the entire Maxtor range is competitive. Though not the cheapest drives available I believe that the small difference increase in price over the cheap drives is worth it for the potential gains in reliability and speed. Maxtor only have Western Digital to match them... Read review

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Advantages: Great speed Great Price Great Storage space
Disadvantages: Very difficult and badly thought out instructions

...I was looking for a new hard drive to go into the computer that i had just built myself. I wanted space for games, fancied good performance and as a student am on a budget, the diamondmax plus 40 seemed to fit the bill perfectly. 15gb of space and 7200rpm for only £90 wonderful i thought, and it is, it works great very fast and has without doubt increased the performance of my computer. However i have a big problem with the manuals and programs that are provided. Having just built the rest of my computer and it was working fine on my old 1gb hard drive i felt confident on installing this hard drive myself and i managed it but not by following the instructions in the manual in fact at first when i did follow the instructions i could not get it to work and spent a good few hours tearing my hair out and it was then that i decided to give up... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, huge capacity, reliable, well built, quiet, good compromise between speed and price
Disadvantages: Relatively expensive, not the biggest or fastest

...not been available for long enough. You can rest assured though that this drive is unlikely to be a Deathstar wannabe. Although the drive uses fluid dynamic bearings, it is only quiet when vibration is reduced. Idling noise levels do seem to be louder than the very quiet Samsung Spinpoint, but in a good case it will not be noticeable. The only problem I have with the drive is that its competition, even the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drive, is too good. They generally have bigger capacities for less. If you want the assurance of a warranty or a drive for near-line applications then get this, but for general use this is certainly overkill which is why I cannot recommend it to the vast majority of purchasers. ****EDIT: Just one last point: This 200GB is approximately 180GBP. This is about 90p per gigabyte. The Maxtor DiamondMAx Plus 9 drive which... 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 to this though... 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: 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: UDMA 66, Good build quality
Disadvantages: 5200rpm spin speed, small cache

...If there's one hard drive company that knows how to hit the consumer hard, it's Maxtor. With a range of retail-packaged drives and the accent on value, the company has done well in the consumer sector, in the OEM and particularly the upgrade markets. The new VL line is intended to strengthen that position, with VL standing for 'Value Line'. Considering that this product range features 10, 15 and 20GB capacities, with the top-of-the-range model coming in at a mere £149 including VAT, it's hard to argue with the name. Maxtor is not known for being a high-performance drive manufacturer, but even so, the DiamondMax VL drives are not sluggish. The 5,400rpm spin speed is average for this end of the market, and there's a sub-10ms (just) access time, 512KB of SDRAM data buffer and a maximum potential throughput of 66MB/sec, based on the drives... 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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