My Maxtor PATA hard drive is not being recognized by XP. It's my secondary hard drive. Not sure what is problem. I don't think it's hard drive, I think it's the cable but will do some investigating when I get chance.

This gives me excuse, however, to buy a new one; but which one? I still like Maxtor. And I know people bash Maxtor. There are some Seagate fanatics and there are some WD fanatics.

Rather than ask which is better, I though I'd ask, how old is your hard drive that still works, no matter what size it is or what age? Trying to find out how long some of these brands last so I can pick one.

If you have more than one kind, please fill in all that apply.

iv got a bunch of hdd's, both laptop and desktop. my desktop is a western digital 80gb and its about 3 years old, then i have a maxtor 40gb and its the same age. but then i have 2 fugitsu 40gb's for laptops, (one has a major error in the MBR and it only reads, can be used in a laptop for a main drive) then i have a 20gb fujitsu and its about 5 years old, then i have a toshiba 4gb and that came with my compaq laptop and the laptop is 9 years old. i have a bunch of other drives, but i dont use them all.

id have to suggest getting a maxtor or western digital, we have 3 maxtors here at my house and they all have been working flawlessly for 3+ years.

too many hard drives for me imo

Edited July 7, 200620 yr by Cygnus

i gota ton of these things:

11gb maxtor 7 years

2gb western digital 10+ years

2gb segate who knows?

realy old things, amazing that i can get their capacity in flash drive format now for 40$

250mb samsung 4200rpm spin drive

if I compress it, i get 500mb yay

7.6gb maxtor, 8yrs old, works just fine in my dads computer with winxp, but boy does that thing make alot of noise.

20 gig Western Digital will be five years old this september!

20GB Seagate thats 8yrs old and still works perfectly.

One working WD 80 GB 6 years old

One working WD 80 GB 5 years old

One working Seagate 10 GB 8 years old

One working Maxtor 1.2 GB 10+ years old

One working Maxtor ~500 MB 10+ years old (bought with a 486 DX)

One working Maxtor ~320 MB 10+ years old, maybe 15 ? (bought with a 386 SX, but i'm not sure it was a Maxtor in fact)

(the last one has about 10% bad sectors after a power failure -- i guess the heads has landed !)

AFAIK, these 3 brands are equivalent in terms of quality if seen on the long term. But some models are better than others. If you want a reliable drive, look for "special edition" ones (sometimes they have twice cache, sometimes a better case, etc...)

++

I have a 5 yr old maxtor, 6.5 year old IBM, a 3 year old WD, and a couple 3 year old seagates.

I've had good and bad luck with all HD manufacturers.

In fact there are bad series in all manufacturers, but actually the best warranty is offered by seagate with 5 years.

But in my case at the support level maxtor and WD are the best.

2gigger seagate

I have a Maxtor BigFoot that's gotta be 15 years old...large format 5 1/4" i believe.

Still runs fine.

patio. B)

lol i heard about those, werent they only around 2 - 4 gb? my dad's friend had one. he said the thing was toooooo big. (physical size i mean) didnt those drives have problems? just some i mean.

they should make new drives 5.25" and pack the biggest speed an capacity into them

lol i heard about those, werent they only around 2 - 4 gb? my dad's friend had one. he said the thing was toooooo big. (physical size i mean) didnt those drives have problems? just some i mean.

Yep too big... the rig it runs now it's just layed on the floor with the case open.

It brings back memories though as i listen to it thrash around when reading multimedia files....

But for a durability factor considering how i beat the snot out of it over the years i'm suprised it's still around.

patio. B)