Maxtor Hardrives -general inquiry and a not so pressing ?

[edX]

I've noticed there are a few folks here with Maxtors. I have an 80gb 1394 external storage unit that i bought back near time they first appeared. It took me three days to get the disk to mount without crashing my system (9.0.4 at the time). Their tech supported asked me to return the drive and rule out a faulty drive before they would procede with any other solutions. Since the store i bought this from is nearly 30 miles away I was not quick to try this. However this explained why the unit i bought was the only non-returned one out of about 20 in the store !! I eventually found that there was a conflict between their own extensions that were all actively installed by their installer. Removing two of them got me running. It was months before they even put mac software on their site. I was wondering if they have ever sorted this mess out or if getting them up and running is still time consuming work? I use mine constantly but would never recommend one to somebody based on my experience. I emailed and complained several times but never even got back so much as an automated recognition they had received my note. I am still pretty pissed off at their attitude !!!

Also, somewhere along the way i lost the ability to recognize the drive with the maxtor utilities and so cannot update drivers or run their diagnostics. The drive works fine and i can even get it to show up from some bootable cd's including the ones I made. I have never renamed it or anything like that. Does anyone know how to remedy this or if i am really better off with this development. The only real problem is that other diagnostic programs take so longggggggg to go over 80gb worth of disc. Any tips for making techtool pro, drive 10 or norton utilities work better for this process would be appreciated. (norton won't even scan the whole disk most of the time. It reports an error after identifying and fixing one or two problems) I have tryed increasing memory for the apps when possible and this helps but not enough. While i would hate to lose everything on it for any reason, there is nothing on it I couldn't function without - all recent docs are on mac hd or backed up to cd. I tried to optimize recently and norton speed disk wouldn't let me because it said I had bad sectors yet a surface scan by utilities detected none. techtool pro also reported none. I tried to optimize with ttp and managed to get 1st pass done and files defragmented overnite. I have never completed the second pass as i have let it run for over 16 hrs and progress bar still shows less than about 1/8 of job done. It got some speed back but not as much as I was hoping for. TIA to anyone who can help out with this.

 

[genghiscohen]

Well, this is a very late response, but...
I just bought a 40 GB Maxtor hard drive to replace the stock 6 GB drive in my 350Mhz slot-loading iMac. To prep myself for the "operation," I read as much info as I could find on iMac hard drive replacement and Maxtors. The consensus was, do not use the Maxtor software at all.
So my plan is to install the new drive, boot up off of my OS X.1 installer CD, initialize and partition with the Mac Disk Utility, and keep my fingers crossed.

 

[kenny]

That's pretty much what I did with the 80GB FW Max. drive I got. I used the included CD as a coaster, and simply plugged the drive in. Within seconds, it mounted, and I started putting stuff on it. This is MacOSX, BTW.

These days, it probably safe to ignore the "value added" software that Maxtor includes with any of their drives (external or internal). There are a few utilities on their website that will let you monkey around with some of the drive parameters (write-back caching, ATA spec, etc), but I've never had a problem with simply dropping them in a system, and using the OS-supplied tools to work with them. The defaults are generally safe.

This applies to the Windows side as well; the supplied software is like the old AOL floppies - format 'em and you've got a free floppy... Of course, with a machine with an old, un-upgradeable BIOS, its a different story, but why would you install an 80GB drive in a P75 anyway?

 

[edX]

Thanks for the replies!! I'll stop being concerned about it. i guess i just thught it might help to be able to update the drivers, but sounds like this isn't necessary.

 

[SCrossman]

Originally posted by genghiscohen
The consensus was, do not use the Maxtor software at all.

Gengh is right, don't use the Maxtor stuff as it is not needed. The Mac can see it just fine and format without their software.
I even used a 80gb Maxtor to replace a Ultra 2 SCSI RAID 5 in a NT 4 server when it died. So much for redundant arrays of disk when the controller dies.
I put a 100gb in my Dad's G4 yikes tower and slaved his old drive in a couple of minutes.

cheersÉ
steve

 

[j79]

I bet I have the same maxtor drive as you Ed and now that I'm actually trying to use the drive, I'm running into errors left and right.. so hopefully someone in here can help me out.

Basically for me, anytime I try to copy multiple files or transfer one large file, the drive hangs/crashes and I get an error.

(Screenshot)

BTW, if you notice only 10 MBs was written there.. =(

After this happens, the drive is inaccessible.. the red light stays lit, and that error "There is a problem with the disk..." constantly pops up. I have to unmount the drive to start using the computer again. To use the drive, I have to shut down the computer, shut off the drive, boot up the computer and then plug the drive back in. If I just shut down the computer and then restart, the drive will not work (red light is lit, system will hang at start up)

I've ran the tools (Diagnostics, Integrity) that Maxtor provides.., but no error occurs. I've lowered the Max Payload size to the lowest, and same with Max Data Transfer.

I've ran Disk First Aid.. no errors

I've also tried using the drive without any Maxtor software installed (the extras), but still have the same problem.

This only happens when I transfer "large" files....
When I say large, I mean files that are over 40-50 MBs.. So yeah, they're not even that LARGE...

Any help anyone?

 

[.dev.lqd]

The only software Maxtor has made that's been even remotely decent has been their disk utility for PC's- maxblast or something. Very easy to use to get a giant drive into an old machine with an old OS.

Their disks are ok- it's just that the front-end people seem to have their top-end shoved into their bottom end, which causes an enormous pain in the same for end users.

Best tip- buy their drives, throw out the CD. Firewire hard drives are designed to a standard so that all of them will just work with MacOS that has firewire support.