Maxtor or WD? What's Your choice?

Posting this kind of question is just like asking "Toyota or Nissan? What's your choice?".

Both Maxtor and WD make a wide variety of HDDs with different interface (IDE & SCSI), speed, cache and disk sizes. Perhaps you should give more details on any particular models that you want to compare?

Sorry, I was tired when posting it....LOL

I guess to narrow it down, lets go with IDE drives, cache is no matter, size may vary, and lets keep it to the 7200 rpm models....

I guess I am looking for reliability issues, more so than anything else...



Quick!!! Whats the number for 911?

id always been a fan on maxtor, ..

dad owned three OEM pc's.. and all had WD's.. he always had problems with those pc's in the hard drive area..

I'd go with the Maxtor diamond plus 9.. Maxtor has proven to me they make one of the best Drives

This Community is like a Second Family!!

I second that motion. Diamond Max Plus 9 has option for 2mb or 8mb cache, and has higher than 50MB/s read rate!

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

Well the WD 'JB' with 8MB cache was top of the heap with performance... but now maxtor has it too, so they are about neck and neck.
Its really down to reliablility and personal prefrence.
I have both a 800JB and a D740X... both are highly reliable thus far, i just find the seek noises of the maxtor a bit loud, dont know if this has been fixed with the Max9 range though.


<b><font color=purple>[Rik_]</font color=purple> I wonder how many people have made their own phasechange system?
<font color=blue>[LHGPooBaa]</font color=blue> I get phasechange whenever i eat a hot chillie   </b>

LOL!! This was about the same discussion that we were having the other night...which one "seemed" to have the best record...as we both have had good and bad experiences with both of these brands. And that is why I started this thread.... :-)



Okay, I got it apart. Now how do I put it back together again???

WD have better record. A few years ago Maxtor hard drive have the highest fail rate but now it seem to be fine. WD always have pretty good record for the last 10 years.

I post in favour of WD.

I build pcs as part of my business, I have had 6 Maxtors fail on me, and not a single WD. In fact in my old AMD 500, there is an old 8.4GB WD Master, 6.4GB WD Slave, and a REALLY REALLY old 4.2GB Secondary Slave (7 Years old). All of my PC's except my notebook (obviously) are equipped with WD's for the simple reason of reliability and performance that are all but unrivalled.

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

I have an OLD old old maxtor and it still works good

one day, intel'ers will see the errors of there ways...

well i can just say this... Im sure both manufacts make a great drive.. but im sure there are a few bad seeds in each batch..

sometimes you just get unlucky and get one of the bad ones.

never owned WD.. although, I've only had one pc in my life.. and it's a Emachine 533ir piece of flamming SH!T... well.. it did serve it's purpose.

i've had it for about 2 yrs now.. and it was already out dated when it was bought..(dad surprised me with it for my bday).. any

i've now got older and smarter and now decided to build my very own pc..

my uncle built his own first pc about 5 months ago..
he built the xp1900+ system with the kt266a Soyo Dragron+
(great board) geforce 3ti500.. anyway, his system is running perfect no problems, thanks to this website he made all the right choices in hardware..

well anyway.. i hope more and more people start building there own pc's... not only is it fun, you get a great feeling as well, when that puppy bootz up!

many people vote for Maxtor and WD... anybody vote for IBM?

i guess seagate and baracude drives are way outta the question


This Community is like a Second Family!!

Although WD makes great products, i would have to vote for Maxtor. I've got a DiamondMax 9 and i cant even hear the thing! I've also had several maxtor drives in older systems and they are still working. They make truly exceptional products. My hat goes off to them.

Well thanx all, for responding. It all pretty much confirms the conclusion that we came to, and that is that both are pretty much on par, and it comes down to a matter of personal experience and personal preference.

Thanx again!!!



This post is guaranteed fresh for up to 7 days after the date printed on the box.

I prefer WD myself. Not quite as fast or quiet as maxtors.

But Every WD we've used at my house lasts and lasts (We usually use them past their 6th "birthday" and only one has died (it lasted longer than 6 years).

I work someplace where WDs and Maxtors are just as common, and we see about 10x more Maxtor deaths than WD deaths.

IBM is also a good brand, provided you don't get a deathstar batch.


Additionally, if you are a klutz like me, don't get a maxtor, THEY HAVE HORRIBLE SHOCK PROTECTION, I've dropped my WD from a foot in the air (unintentionally), and it still works 2 and a half years later. I had a Maxtor that dropped 3 inces (not even a full drop, it was in a case that fell on it's side, so it didn't even get a full G of acceleration), and it croaked.

hahaha, better record my ass. I've had tens of WD drives, every single one has failed within months. That's a crap hdd!!! maxtor gets over 50MB/s transfer rate w/ the Diamondmax 9, so it beats the WD.

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

I just got a WD800JB (the 80 gig 8 mb), my maxtor failed last year and the replacement was DOA and the next they sent whines like an unpayed hooker (not peaking of experience with the pay-per-use ladies). I'll let you know when it bites the dust, but don't hold your breath. :wink:

<b><font color=blue>Press 1 if you want to be on hold, 2 for disconnect, 3 for a representative who will put you on hold before disconnecting.</font color=blue></b>

every company makes lemon's obviously.. not by choice.. but some unlucky ones get the bad ones and then turn on that company..well that's understandable.. But if WD was so bad.. they still wouldn't be in business.. anyway with that said.. im in favor of maxtor ONLY because that's what i have and it works great.. my dad bought a compaq..that came with a WD and it didn't perform up to par.

Is THG Slightly Slacking??

Well my maxtor (30G) still zoom zoom around nice and no problems other than the loud whining (it became so bad that I had to remove it, that's why I got the WD80G). But after removing it I noticed the warranty exp. date on it say 2004 Feb., so I'm calling them tomorrow and see if I can get a silent one.

My old WD (5G) still goes fine in my sister's computer, that thing just doesn't want to die.

Have a year and a half old Seagate (40G) that does fine, long as I don't install it in the pull-out tray, if I do then it overheat and beeps for a while before corrupting everything on it. But running fine since installed it in the case instead of the tray.

I got a nice scare today after moving drives around, got the loud clicking and whirling sound coming from the new WD and then errors started till total death. I was "holy crap this didn't last long". Then realized that I plugged the modded power plug (using it for the 2x120mm case fans) into it so it was loose... duh... so every time I pushed the desk it lost power. Changed the plug, did a format (corrupted files hell) and fresh install of everything. So far it's great, system running silent and stable again.

Running DX9 and Catalyst 2.5 now, no clue if it's any good or not, but will start gaming some tomorrow and see. Doubt I'll notice anything, unless it start giving problems.

<b><font color=blue>Press 1 if you want to be on hold, 2 for disconnect, 3 for a representative who will put you on hold before disconnecting.</font color=blue></b>