Warning about Maxtor ATA-133 Drives

I noticed many on the OT threads have these drive.

It's no surprise, since it got great spec's;
40mb density platters, ATA-133, 7200rpm,
40pin EIDE, liquid baring(quite) mechanism.

I just wanted to warn you guys about
pushing these D740X-6L's too hard.

I got the latest Promise RAID controller with
support of ATA-133 drives, and Promise worked
closely with Maxtor to develope this controller.

After 72 hours one of my new Maxtor's siezed up and died.
www.newegg.com generously replaced it, and the new set
of drives are running fine, but here's what I noticed;

The drive that died was very different from it's twin.

It had a completely different controller board from
a much earlier serial number series. Also the houseing
around the spindle was manufactured differently, and
the IDE connection housing was different, and copper.

I suspect this drive was not fully ATA-133 complient
until enough controllers were in the market for them
to uncover problems; then Maxtor re-engineered it.

My advice is before you push your D740X-6L drive to
the limit make sure they fit the following profile:

SN 662206XXXXXX or higher (front side sticker)
PGSXX controller or higher (front side sticker)
aluminum IDE connector pins (bottom back side)
exposed spindle core (bottom center)

maybe your dead drive was just a fluke, but thanks for the heads up :)

If the drive had died mechanically,
I would agree with you.

But what's queer is how Maxtor's own utilities
don't see this drive, while Partition Magic 7 does!

after the failure, I was able to get the drive
spinning up and working, but it was no longer
formatable on an older ATA-100 bus.

Leaving me to believe the controller on the drive
simply could not handle the ATA-133 bus correctly.
Since the Promise ATA-133 controller refused to
deal with this drive, and reported a false status.

Also the 1720 error's using that new early warning
for drive failure only occured on the ATA-100 not
the ATA-133 bus. I can't blame Promise since my
new replacement drives are RAID'ing wonderfully.

I'm just putting you guys on the Q.T.

You are free to draw your own conclusions.

Peace

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Originally posted by thebove
maybe your dead drive was just a fluke, but thanks for the heads up :)

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Ditto, the Maxtor D740x L series hds are working great for me. Although I must agree that the MaxBlast software is flaky and I had to use some other utility. :)

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Originally posted by ZhaoYun

Ditto, the Maxtor D740x L series hds are working great for me. Although I must agree that the MaxBlast software is flaky and I had to use some other utility. :)

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Never buy a Maxtor.

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Originally posted by AMD maniac
Never buy a Maxtor.

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Never buy a IBM. :p

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Originally posted by AMD Soldier
Never buy a IBM. :p

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Love that 8 hour a day limit. :p

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Originally posted by AMD Soldier


Never buy a IBM. :p

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Yeah no kidding! I've had one die and it wasn't pleasant.

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Originally posted by AMD maniac
Never buy a Maxtor.

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Why not? I've had my Maxtor for nearly three years -- no problems, and still runs great.

thanks from the info, know we know...

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Originally posted by Stratus Fear
Why not? I've had my Maxtor for nearly three years -- no problems, and still runs great.

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on the other hand, the only drives I ever had problems with were maxtors. then again, my dad's 30gb maxtor works fine. it all boils down to personal experience, i suppose.

I've had Quantum 850mb for almost 7years now, hehe beat that!

and I've read earlier how ppl hate quantum...

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Originally posted by ZhaoYun

Love that 8 hour a day limit. :p

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It's 11 hr a day. :p

I've got a 8 year old 2.5Gb (it was HUGE for the time :p) hdd. I think it was a seagate, can't remember and don't feel like looking it up. Anyways, still going strong. Also got a 3 year old 28.5Gb barracuda ATA that's going strong. Newest one is a maxtor D740X 60Gb w/fluid bearing. Nice HDD.

Ah yer all kiddies :P
I got a 10 year old 250 MB Western Digital. (not used in ages though ;) )
Back in those days you were able to fit Windows and a ton of games on that much space :P

Friend of mine swears by IBM (he had a few maxtors die on him), i swear by Maxtor (never had one die on me yet, currently using 4 -
60 60 60 15). I suppose it comes down to luck/experience/usage.
One thing about IBM though, personally I don't know any HD manufacturer with this much negative publicity...GXP 75 series king of HD failure, GXP 120 series shouldn't be used for more than 8 hours a day :P (do they have any drives without issues?)

(did I mention my 20 MB Amiga HD? - dunno manufacturer)

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Originally posted by SpysLikeUs
SN 662206XXXXXX or higher (front side sticker)
PGSXX controller or higher (front side sticker)
aluminum IDE connector pins (bottom back side)
exposed spindle core (bottom center)

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Crap!!!
Is these specs the bad ones? :

s/n 66220083xxxx
TSSXX

Looks like copper to me :(
the spindle core i don't know about. It's a circle wich is cut in calf (almost) with black outer and 1/2 inch inner aluminum with a little hole ( :) )

Sounds like i've got the bad one. I have'nt tried it yet but well se what happens. Hope you're wrong :D

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Originally posted by Skywize
Ah yer all kiddies :P
I got a 10 year old 250 MB Western Digital. (not used in ages though ;) )
Back in those days you were able to fit Windows and a ton of games on that much space :P

Friend of mine swears by IBM (he had a few maxtors die on him), i swear by Maxtor (never had one die on me yet, currently using 4 -
60 60 60 15). I suppose it comes down to luck/experience/usage.
One thing about IBM though, personally I don't know any HD manufacturer with this much negative publicity...GXP 75 series king of HD failure, GXP 120 series shouldn't be used for more than 8 hours a day :P (do they have any drives without issues?)

(did I mention my 20 MB Amiga HD? - dunno manufacturer)

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hmmm, still got my 386 in the house somewhere with it's MASSIVE 85meg WD hdd...
Still going..... well, still going...

Quote:

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Originally posted by Skywize
Ah yer all kiddies :P
I got a 10 year old 250 MB Western Digital. (not used in ages though ;) )
Back in those days you were able to fit Windows and a ton of games on that much space :P

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i remember having an 80mb HD on my 286; I would brag to my dad and brother that it would defrag much faster than their hard drives, and they'd say "well that's because it's like 1/5 as big as the hard drives we're using"

also i had a 340mb Maxtor that suddenly began making all files 1byte in size; not good.

My IBM crashed, I RMA'd it, got a ATA 133 700 RPM 40GB Maxtor to replace it and then the Maxtor crashed, and I lost everything. Bad luck. :mad:

Currently have to use a 40GB Baraccuda IV, at least it has given me no problems.

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Originally posted by AMD Soldier


Never buy a IBM. :p

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And never buy a Seagate or Western Digital. Gee what's that leave us with, solidstate drives? :D hehe

I think I'm lucky...I have two 45GB 75GXP's running in RAID-0. They've been going strong for a year and half. I keep waiting for them to die any day now, but so far so good :)

I've had good luck with WD. Never used Maxtor, good luck with Seagate as well. I may try the new Maxtors when I build my next system.

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Originally posted by Samjham
I think I'm lucky...I have two 45GB 75GXP's running in RAID-0. They've been going strong for a year and half. I keep waiting for them to die any day now, but so far so good :)

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Wow, you're one of the lucky ones.

I had a Maxtor when I had a K6-2 and it made bunch of file corruption if I overclocked so that's why I hate it. So far this 75GXP been running from Summer of 2000 and I have no problems what so ever so I'll stay with IBM for awhile. But I don't know what I'll get next.

Well i got one of each drive, ibm and maxtor. The ibm is a 30gb 75gxp and the maxtor is a 40gb d740x. I just put in the 40gb into my other rig and so far, no problems but it is the non-fluid bearing one and is kind of loud. My ibm may be loud too but with these fans, i can't here it at all. I have had the ibm for over a year now and its going fine still *crosses fingers, knocks on wood, does a little hd dance*.