Considering buying this Maxtor one-touch external drive, any first hand reviews?

[Corey]

This looks kind of awesome for backing up my work, just thought I'd see if anyone has one of these or has used them?

http://www.maxstore.ca/product.asp?sku=2562934

[JimS]

I have never used that particular drive, but I have had a couple of Maxtor’s. I suppose that I’m a bit tougher on hard drives than most people are, but each of the Maxtor’s I’ve had, burned up within 18 months. One of them didn’t quite make it a year. Your mileage may vary. I have serious doubts if any single 7200 RPM drive is actually going to provide 400 Mb/sec – 480 Mb/sec data transfer rate that that drive advertises. If you plan on using it for video editing, I would strongly recommend going with dual drives set up in a RAID 0 configuration. Personally, I use an external Medea drive with dual, fast wide SCSI disks, but these G-Tech G-Raids look interesting, and seem to be competitively priced.

http://www.videoguys.com/gtech.html

Never used one myself so I can’t personally vouch for them. I’m sure Eric can shed more light on what types of drives will provide adequate sustained data rates to be suitable for video.

If you plan on using it for something other than video, then as our dear friend Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, “never mind”.

[Corey]

Gilda Radner is one of my all time favorite humans. :)

Yeah I guess I may as well get something that's good for video too. My main thing is finding a good daily back up source for my work though.

[AXXESS]

They are fantastic. I have the first version models (I) and they do work great for video via FW. I have been using them for about a year. NO dropped frames, NO issues, and endless storage capabilities!

When I first started in video, I was using the Medea SCSI ext HDD (at a cost of $1000 US for a 2/50GB model) :eek:. I have found that these Maxtor drives handle the job quite well. :yes :yes

[Corey]

Hmmm.. That's great news. As Fat Tony from The Simpsons always says, "Let us do dis ting."

Now to figure out where to get one. I spent an hour on the phone yesterday, not one to be had anywhere in this hay bale podunk. :o

I'm a two armed man in a one sleeved town.

[Adam]

I love Maxtor.. I have about 4 drives from them over the years and I have never had a problem at all. I have been running a Maxtor 80GB for well over a year without any issues. And 2 10Gigers for the past 3-4 years..

Great value for internal drives.. as far as external goes I have no clue so this post kindof dances around your question,,

Adam.

[Intrigued]

I too enjoy the comfort of three (3) Maxtor H.D.s through out my home network. I also like the MaxBlast 3 diagnostic CD for their H.D.s. And I find that Maxtor, if needed, will take care of you over the telephone (well, it's been a couple years, but back then they were helpful).

:yes

[eric_darling]

I'm with JimS. For me, Maxtors have failed faster than other makes. The only drive I've otherwise ever had die was a Western Digital.

We currently use 7 Hitachi Global Storage drives on a regular basis. They are all mounted externally in Oxford 922 chipset cases from Other World Computing, and none have ever had the slightest hiccup. The only other brand I really trust anymore is Seagate - we have a few of those floating around from a deal on some 200 GB models some time ago.

[Dermot]

Yes I'm with JimS and Eric, Had a Maxtor one touch 120mb external drive and it only lasted about 14 months. No more Maxtor for me. I am going with the SeaGate 160mb.

Dermot

[Corey]

OK I grabbed one of these:

http://www.iomega.com/na/products/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=20125171&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=63237&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=63191

Spent myself to smithereens this month, I'm on cold macaroni and stale water until further notice... :yes

On a sourer note, the service at Compusmart Calgary is so far beyond bad that I'm astonished they manage to stay afloat. I walked in at peak time, and there were 8 sales people standing around doing nothing, zero customers. I got bumrushed by 2 of them at the same time, so I said to one of them that I was there to buy an external hard drive, firewire needed, at least 160 GB. He said, no dice. No such thing in stock. I asked him if he was sure, he said yes, and then checked the computer for 5 minutes and confirmed no such thing was there. So I said thanks and started to look around, within about 10 seconds I spotted a whole shelf full of them. So I grabbed one, causing the manager to come over and tell me "Whoa, whoa, whoa" that I am not allowed to grab things from the shelf, so I said, "OK here" and handed him the drive, he said, "No, no, that's OK. You can carry it around, you just aren't allowed to pick it up."

"Uh-huh..." says I.

So I ask him if they have the drive in a 250 as well as 160 GB, he said no but he could order one in for me, with a 2-3 week wait. I said OK and then noticed that about 6 inches from his elbow was a 250GB drive of the type I was asking for. So I asked him what it was, he said, "OH HERE WE GO!", etc.

Anyhow more similar stuff ensued. Eventually I got my cables and gear and headed for the door. I was paying cash. Apparently this set off some sort of alarm bell, and I had to wait for the manager to come over and carefully scan every single bill twice, one by one, through a counterfeit detector. NO apology or politeness, actually very rude, as though to punish me for using cash. It was surreal. So after about ten minutes they figured out the cash was real and gave me a receipt but of course never demagnetized my purchase. So the door alarm went off, causing them to go through my bags once more (the bags *they* packed) and so forth.

And that's on a $1,000 purchase. Imagine how they treat you for $50. :)

Absolutely terrible. I can't believe 2 salesmen and the manager told me the drive which was sitting 2 feet away didn't exist, and would take 3 weeks to order, even after checking their in-store computer for 5 minutes. With sales competence like that it's a wonder they stay in business. We're talking an 800 square foot store here, not a big store. And the punchline is that these guys walk around like peacocks and consider themselves to be top notch experts. :)

Why on earth is it that incompetency and self confidence seem to come hand-in-hand. Without exception all the most skilled folks I know are humble yet all the incompetents I meet seem to have gigantic, uncontrollable egos.

Easily the rudest, most uncomfortable place I've ever shopped. Bad prices and poor selection too. Never again. *NEVER* again for Compusmart. From now on avoiding Compusmart is no longer optional. :yes

[Intrigued]

OK I grabbed one of these:

http://www.iomega.com/na/products/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=20125171&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=63237&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=63191

Spent myself to smithereens this month, I'm on cold macaroni and stale water until further notice... :yes
I like it! FW 800. :yes

:D

[Corey]

My current comp has no firewire 800. Next time. For now I'm 400ing it. Actually not even yet, so far I'm just using the USB. With this drive it doesn't install right, you have to go into the device manager manually to initialize, format, and assign it a drive letter. Once you do that though, it's all gravy.

So far so good, looks like it's going to be a handy tool. :yes

[AXXESS]

What an experience! Guess they dont realize who pays their paychecks.... how alienating. I'm with ya, I would never go back either. In fact I might return what I bought! ;)

Almost as bad as the cashier at Wal-Mart not demagnetizing your purchase and Grandma racing after you as you exit.... "Sir.... Sir.?????" Sheesh. :rolleyes

[Corey]

The reason I originally stopped shopping at Compusmart is their return policy. Oh yes, did I mention I knew better? :) You pay 15% restock fee, *even if the item was sold to you broken*. Yep. The only reason I swallowed my reluctance and went into Compusmart is because they are the only store in all of Calgary who has a 15' premium quality coax VGA extension in stock, and I got the last two. :)

I had to buy two for setting up my studio in a video friendly way. I also had to buy a USB extension, 4 port hub, some premium audio cabling, and a couple PS/2 extensions so that I could get my whole system to the other side of the room whilst still keeping the computer itself out in the hallway. (for zero noise) Only Compusmart had the stuff in stock and I didn't want to wait for online. Next time I will for sure. In fact I think I'm going to start shopping online a lot more after these last couple experiences. Prices online are much better.

Oh well, as Tigg would say, at least the cables were expensive. :yes

The VGAs alone were $60 a crack. :eek: But what can you do, sometimes you just have to weigh the options and bite the bullet. On the upside I now have the makings of a great little "video equipped" studio, and it's all laid out "properly" finally. Next month I'll grab the Rifa softbox so I can start shooting, then in May I'll grab a Fresnel.

I'm going to grab a studio soundproofing kit too such as the prima londonacoutsics kit, now that they *finally* started stocking them here in town at one of the stores. In the end all this will be *so* worth it.

On the upside this new hard drive is the cats Peejays. All I need now is a really heavy duty UPS system to guard against any possible power surge and I'll actually feel pretty safe about my data for the first time ever. :)

[gbrown]

Hey, Corey, your tale reminds me of this weekend... Dorothy and I were Out Shopping and she remembered she needed to pick up a mini-cassette recorder for her daughter (E'beth's going to interview her Grandmother today. I guess hearing me talk about how glad I am that I had got my Dad "on tape" before he died got her to thinking.) But I digress :D ...

So, Dorothy finishes paying for her goods at the counter in Circuit City and comes over to me shaking her head. "Some computer place... the guy at the counter is poking around a customer's machine, totally clueless...and says 'Hummm, must be a virus...' to the customer's problems." Could have been a power supply problem for all THAT guy knew...

On the other hand, our local Best Buys and CompUSA stores are pretty decent. Patrick (my older son) knows most of the guys who are in the Best Buy. Fellow computer geeks at the high school and U. The guys over at CompUSA actually Go Out Of Their Way to figure out alternate and lower cost ways to do things. This may just be a local Minnesota abberation, of course. Your milage may vary!

[Corey]

This may just be a local Minnesota abberation, of course.

Hee! Yeah Calgary is a boomtown and has been for a couple decades now, and I think the service goes hand in hand with that rapid expansion. It is very, very rare to get decent service on anything here. I mean, I'm not even looking for "good" service, I'd be happy with "un-bad" service. :)