[LiveBrianD]

I notice that HD Tune says my old Maxtor 6B250S0, which I put in to mess with, has a spin up time of 27.7 seconds, and a spin retry count of 1. In contrast, my WD's spinup time is 5.1 seconds, the Samsung is 3.9 seconds, and both have a spin retry count of 0. The Maxtor's health status is 'caution', while it's 'ok' for the others. Is this drive ready to die? (it is several years old, and it is a Maxtor...)

[Rommel]

LiveBrianD, on 01 February 2012 - 06:41 PM, said:

I notice that HD Tune says my old Maxtor 6B250S0, which I put in to mess with, has a spin up time of 27.7 seconds, and a spin retry count of 1. In contrast, my WD's spinup time is 5.1 seconds, the Samsung is 3.9 seconds, and both have a spin retry count of 0. The Maxtor's health status is 'caution', while it's 'ok' for the others. Is this drive ready to die? (it is several years old, and it is a Maxtor...)

Hard question to answer.
It may chug along that way for who knows.
My first drive that died was a maxtor.
About 2 yrs in service.
Without warning it sounded like a clock.
Had a WD die after, maybe 5 yrs, it just stopped spinning without a visible warning.
Never tested it like you did.

I would not put anything on it that matters.

Here, look at this then kick me in the butt.

http://www.tigerdire...87&sku=P33-8501

[LiveBrianD]

I had a refurb maxtor that I got in 2006 I think that got a bunch of bad sectors 2 years later. It was a 100GB SATA refurb. I then put that drive in a bag full of water, put it in the freezer for a day or two, and then smashed all the ice off for fun with a friend. I then opened it up, dried off the platters with a towel, and plugged it into a spare power supply. Man, that made some REALLY loud noises, so I very quickly unplugged it.

I don't actually need this 250GB maxtor, as it's been in the closet for a few years now (it used to be my boot drive, and around the time I was planning my i5 build, 2 years ago, I noticed that the maxtor's health wasn't great. It hasn't been booted up since then).

I have to wonder - since seagate bought maxtor, how is their quality? (btw my Samsung drive works just fine, 5 years later, but seems to make the whole case make a little low-pitched hum... annoying... and this happened with both my old case and my antec 300)

I'm not going to be buying an ssd. My WD Black seems good enough. (That SSD's price isn't at all bad, better than what I've seen before, but it'll hurt my wallet more than I'd like.)

[smax013]

Rommel, on 01 February 2012 - 07:43 PM, said:

I would not put anything on it that matters.

If you are backing up you files like YOU SHOULD BE, then you could put whatever you want on it.

Of course, if you are like 95+% of the people who do not back up their files, then, yeah, don't put anything that matters on it.

[LiveBrianD]

Of course I back up files. The raid array in my mom's pc crashed once and that was a pain (at least her pictures were backed up on CDs).

[smax013]

LiveBrianD, on 03 February 2012 - 03:40 PM, said:

Of course I back up files. The raid array in my mom's pc crashed once and that was a pain (at least her pictures were backed up on CDs).

Then if the files are backed up regularly, then I see no problem with using the drive...even if you think it might die soon. The only reason to not use it would be for REALLY mission critical stuff that you might be actively working on and thus may not have completely up to date backups.

[LiveBrianD]

I don't actually need the drive. Besides, it was making some odd noises. I removed it and put it back in the closet.

[MLStrand56]

I've owned several Maxtor HD's over the yrs. ALL were CRAP. The 1st one, 320Gig had a HARD partition that couldn't be deleted. Then I inherited 2x 200Gig Maxtors with movies & music on them. Both ended up with more Bad Sectors than good.

The best thing you can do with a Maxtor drive, is huck it as far as you can into the ocean!!!

Now I only buy WD drives. Never had one fail yet.

MLStrand56

This post has been edited by MLStrand56: 05 February 2012 - 03:39 PM

[MLStrand56]

LiveBrianD, on 03 February 2012 - 03:40 PM, said:

Of course I back up files. The raid array in my mom's pc crashed once and that was a pain.

Sounds like it was RAID 0. I only use RAID 1 for Data Drives. HD's are so cheap now that it seems silly Not to run RAID 1 for Data.

But I have to admit, 4x 2TB HD's running RAID 5 sure is appealing!!!

MLStrand56

[LiveBrianD]

Maxtor was bought out by Seagate in 2006, and I'm not sure how good Seagate's drives are.

The array was RAID 1, and the individual drives were ok. Since the floods in Thailand, hard drives are no longer cheap, unfortunately. (at least ram is cheap...)