I got the Maxtor One Touch Plus 500 GB USB/FW drive from Best Buy when it was on sale for $140 (price now is like $220, so ignore that...I paid $140):

[www.bestbuy.com]

Stopped by Costco yesterday and they had the Western Digital My Book 500 GB USB/FW for $140 (link shows $150 plus $10 shipping, so ignore that...the warehouse price is $140):

[www.costco.com]

So, both drives are USB/FW and come with the necessary cables. As far as I can tell, they are both also 7200 rpm and 16MB cache drives.

I think the Maxtor has a 5 year warranty, whereas the Western Digital has, in effect, a lifetime warranty since it's from Costco.

So, all things considered equal (which they appear to be on the surface), which would you choose and why? Any personal experiences with either?

Thanks!

PS This drive will be used as a backup drive for my Macbook's internal 250 GB transplanted WD Passport.

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My music blog: [www.auditorymusings.net]


The Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado

sounds like a toss up to me.

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Maxtor

I'd keep the Maxtor. They are made by Seagate, which I trust a whole lot more than WD. Also the Maxtor has a 5 year warranty whereas the WD a 1 year. Obviously the warranty does you no good w/ the data on a dead drive, but I like the fact the company backs up their drive for 5 years. WD knows better than to warrant their crappy drives for more than a year.

Maybe you should toss them up, and see which one still works after they land.

Should something go wrong, Costco will stand behind the product. Best Buy once gave me grief for trying to return something one hour after I bought it. If the quality of the drives was the same (but I don't know if that statement is true), I would go with Costco.

You could also do a speed test to see which is really faster.

AJA has a free utility designed to benchmark disks for video use, but it will work for anything: [www.aja.com]

After having recently tried to get Seagate to replace a dead Maxtor, you'd see me buying the Western Digital. My experience indicates Maxtor is considered the poor stepchild of Seagate.

It seems that, up until maybe a year or two ago, if you mentioned Maxtor and cr@p in the same sentence, you were being redundant.

What happened since then? Is it just because Seagate now makes the Maxtor drives that Maxtor's reputation has gotten better?

It's also weird that WD's perception of quality seems to be based on whether the drive is a desktop or laptop drive. Many forum members really like the Passport drives (especially popping open the case and transplanting the drive into their laptops), but the desktop drives don't seem to have the same reputation?

What gives?

I have had three Maxtors fail in less than three years.

I'd vote WD

Quote
AlphaDog
After having recently tried to get Seagate to replace a dead Maxtor, you'd see me buying the Western Digital. My experience indicates Maxtor is considered the poor stepchild of Seagate.

I had no problem returning a 500gb maxtor that was indicating bad SMART info - they gave me a 750gb seagate in return...

that said, the WD is probably the fastest 500gb drive on the market, but not by that much

Quote
freescotland
I have had three Maxtors fail in less than three years.

I'd vote WD

I had the same experience with WD. One of them lasted a week, another 3 months.

I'll never buy another WD, but maybe I'll add Maxtor to the list.

I'm currently using the WD (picked it up when Dell had a sale + the 20% PayPal discount) as my backup drive.

No complaints, reasonably quiet. Blue circular light on the front looks a little too "Tron" for me, but I have the drive hidden behind my iMac. Also goes to sleep when the Mac does.

About all you can do is consult a fortune teller to determine which will fail first. ;)

Everyone has their own opinion on which manufacturer sucks more and that is based on nothing more than personal experience or anecdotal evidence. Real reliability information is hard to come by. Although StorageReview.com and sites like it do have some reliability data, it too is primarily anecdotal and reader submitted.

I have been hearing about a lot of failures with Chinese-made Seagate/Maxtor drives lately--but that is anecdotal and I can't back it up with any data.

The only facts I can give...

The Maxtor drive is almost certain to be made by Seagate since virtually all consumer models of Maxtor drives currently are rebranded Seagates. However, the warranty on Maxtor consumer drives, even Seagate-made Maxtors is three years instead of five.

Seagate has had some problems with firmware lately. Their new 7200.11s have a firmware bug which only recognizes 8MB of their 32MB cache. Their earlier 7200.10 firmware versions had problems with some Macs.

Thanks for posting this, pinkoos.

I've been wondering what to get to backup both my friends Intel iMac and my S/O's Intel Mini, which is running from an external FW 300GB Newer miniStack.

The WD 500GB My Book seems like a great solution for both, so I'm going down to my local Costco to see if they're in stock.

BTW, Costco is also offering the following hard drive. Is it a perfect long term backup or external boot drive for a 2.6 MacPro with a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port. Wouldn't this be much faster than using a FW 800 external drive. Would it work?


Western Digital
1TB My Book
World Edition II
Storage System for
Remote Access and Sharing
$319.99
Item # 190265
Shipping & Handling: $10.00

Includes:
Remote access storage system
Ethernet cable
AC adapter
Installation & software CD
Quick Install Guide
Specifications:
Read Seek Time: 8.9 ms
Rotational Speed: 7,200 RPM (nominal)
Formatted Capacity: 1,000,236 MB
Capacity: 1 TB
Interface: Ethernet
Interface: 10/100/1000 Ethernet
Compatibility: Windows® 2000/XP
AC Input Voltage: 100-240 VAC
AC Input Frequency: 47-63 Hz
Operating: 5° C to 35° C
Non-operating: -20° F to 65° C
Dimensions: 6.2" L x 4.09" W
Weight: 5.88 lbs.
Limited warranty: 3-years

[www.storagereview.com]

Quote
AllGold
....However, the warranty on Maxtor consumer drives, even Seagate-made Maxtors is three years instead of five.

Not so - the maxtor that I returned had a 5 year warranty as displayed by the seagate site - the replacement's warranty runs to the exact same date in 2011.