Reliability: Maxtor or Western Digital?

Question

I'm considering buying a portable hard drive. I don't particularly care for the 100000000GB versions advertised by many manufacturers, although I would like somewhere around 20-80GB of space. This week in the ads, I found two deals, one from Circuit City, and the other from BestBuy, advertising Maxtor and Western Digital portable drives, respectively. They both offer 60GB of space, although the Maxtor costs only $40 with a $50 rebate and $10 instant-off, while the WD costs $70 with $30 instant-off.

My question is this: Is Maxtor more reliable than Western Digital?

I am also unsure about buying Maxtor simply because it got bought out by Seagate. Would customer support simply go away? Or will it still be around in the years to come? Thanks!

Answer 1

I have tried Maxtor drives several times for my PC and have been disappointed by them. The only ones that have worked over two years have been the ones 60 GB or less in size. The four that I owned ranging from 160 GB to 250 GB have all failed within a two year window (one failed within a 4 month window). The current drives I have and have lasted close to two years are a 250 GB Seagate (ATA) and a 150 GB Samsung (SATA) drive. I've not tried Western Digital at home but for many of the work systems, we haven't had a problem with them, although the work Maxtor drives haven't failed as often as my home disks either. Most of our high end systems tend to use the Seagate Barracuda disks.

Answer 2

I have both, my WD drive has been running for 8 years now and my Maxtor for two or so. Both work absolutely fine, only I can say is that my Maxtor one vibrates slightly more but not too noticeably.

I wouldn't worry about losing customer support. People were worried about this when HP took over Compaq, the buyer usually has an obligation to continue customer support within reasonable timelines. (i.e. if Sun were to buy Microsoft they wouldn't be expected to support Windows 95 but would be expected to support XP and 2k until a reasonable time)

Answer 3

Western Digital have been around a long time. I have had problems with Maxtor is several hard drives. I would buy WD you are paying for quality and you need a good quality hard drive because its everything to your computer. Take care Heather

Answer 4

Both of these are reliable companies as they are the brandname companies. I have using HDs made by both of them, and they all working great, though there aren't many HD companies, so you'll be okay with either one.

I have comment on your portable (external) HD. You don't necessary to get huge HD or even 1TB one, but you can get a decent one like 500 BGb for like under $150 internal (this is very cheap, I found at Fry's stores), and you can get the external enclosure case for it (around $30), combine them, you will get the exact version of external (portable) drive, like you would have bought from the store. You would have paid at least over $200 for that 500 Gb external HD. This is just an example. But I bet you will filled up all of those 80 Gb soon or later anyway, so you might run out of space. This is just my suggestion :)

JLo

Answer 5

i've found over 22 years of working on pc's that western digital drives outlast maxtor by a huge margin and are the only drives i offer for sale

Answer 6

Are you joking? the place is your education coming from? WD have a large music checklist for the two reliability and price. (examine shopper comments) I even have by no potential had a WD tension fail, and nevertheless use some 6 12 months previous legacy drives as externals for backup. Seagate is stable additionally, yet I even have had approximately 3 Maxtors die on me.

Answer 7

I really like my Maxtor. It's realible, easy to operate and small, so it takes little space on my crowded desktop.

Answer 8

I would go with western digital mine works very well. I believe that western digital has always been better than seagate.