Slashdot Mirror
Maxtor Announces 80GB Platters
mackstann writes "StorageReview has some info on Maxtor's new 80GB hard disk platters. The new drives based on the 80GB platters will come in capacities up to 160GB, with some having Serial ATA and/or 8MB caches. They are also resurrecting the (formerly Quantum) Fireball name, shortening their warranty (previously 3 years, now 1 year), and adding some slim (38% thinner) drives to their lineup." New products like this make me feel like I'm not keeping up fast enough. I bought a 100GB drive last spring and it's not even half full yet!
My experience with Maxtor drives failing left and right makes me wonder what took Maxtor so long to shorten their warranty period. I'll never buy another Maxtor. My data is worth more to me than that.
Maybe it was just that the first computer that I ever had had only 500 megs of hard drive space. So i got used to removing everything that was no longer usefull or redundant. But I have a 20 gig hard drive on my curent computer, and have yet to even fill it half way. I can see how this is definatly usefull on servers and as data backup, but my question is, for home users, how is this needed? It would seem to me that this would only serve to give most people even more space to install programs that are just going to screw up or slow down your computer.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"What *really* makes the RIAA nervous?"
Maybe that's the REAL reason behind the 1 yr warranty... Once Palladium/TCPA/SSSCA/CBPTA arrives, all the pre-ban hardware will have conveniently "expired".
Maxtor already has a 160GB hard drive. The 8MB cache is a nice touch, but once you get to storage levels this high, it's usually dead storage anyway. What do I mean by that? I mean you're throwing a ton of stuff on there, not using it for your system drive (I hope).
Personally, I'm up to 630GB and running a bit low on space (about 220GB free last I checked). Let me know when we get 1TB hard drives, then I'll jump up and down.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Big drives are great and all, but it gives a single place to lose a lot of data at once if you aren't doing some sort of raid/mirroring (backups? errr, no habla).
While stuffing my favorite all purpose Enlight 7237 with drives the other day (I made a plexiglass drive bay unit that would allow me to fit (5) 3.5 HDDs in (3) 5.25 bays) so I could consolidate some of my data, I ran into major heat issues.
The plexiglass got so hot it started to slowly bend and the drives were so hot I could not hold them. They were a mix of older ata66 and ata100 western digitals and ibm deskstars. Not too old, not cutting edge. I've played with a few of the new maxtors that have the ata133 fluid dynamic drives and they do seem quieter, but even those got pretty warm.
I don't need 100 gig of space on a light usage workstation, I'll have a hard time filling 40. I also don't want to add extra fans (the less moving parts the better in my book). How about more conetration on heat output?
Heh.
The first hard drive I had, on loan, mind you, had 10 Megabytes of space. I was the size of a small beer fridge, weighed 300 pounds, dimmed the lights when it spun up (which took about a minute), sounded like a jet taking off, and cost about $10,000 (which is why I had it on loan).
It sported TWO 5 megabyte platters: one fixed and one removable -- 14" diameter, IIRC. I remember that CDC Hawk well.
It went well with the Alpha Micro computer, portable teletype, two terminals, and a 300 baud Smart Modem that also occupied my room.
'Course, that was way back in 1982.
You could've hired me.
do what i did, download every episode of simpsons, south park, futurama, family guy, sealab 2021, justice leage, invader zim, mission hill, red dwarf, doctor who, the tick, undergrads... and the list goes on, i have over 300 some hours of downloaded tv shows on my 160gb drive, i put em all in winamp3 on shuffle, its like my own tv station, but without commercials or crappy shows *watches replies calling me a theif/pirate :D*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
That's a damn bad warranty. My next drive will be a Seagate 15k.3, as soon as a retailer can get them in stock. It's $900 for 72GB, but I don't need more than that, the Seagate is fast as fuck, and the warranty covers five years.
Must be nice.
My laptop came with a 20 gig HD.
Add XP, Office, Photoshop, Resin, SQLServer, token Oracle install, a few hundred MB databases, and a few of my favorite IDE's and guess what? I have 1.5 gigs free.
No warez. No games. No
I bought an external firewire disk JUST so I could have a half decent
I remember the days when I thought my 80 MB disk was hot shit. The fact that it was running on my 386@25mhz is irreleavant.
Times change. I wanna big disk.
_Am
The Maxtor Bigfoot 5.25" drives they used to throw in the Compaq 5700s (8.4 GB I believe) were the most failure-prone drives I have ever seen. They would be the point of failure for at LEAST 50% of the Compaqs we got in the shop.
Also, my parents had a HP Pavilion from 1996 or so with a Maxtor 1.2GB disk in it. Died within 2 years. Got a Western Digital, and it hasn't skipped a beat. In fact the ONLY 2 WD Drives I've seen go totally bad, were One I had that I was given because it was bad, and one where they tech who was working on it let the traces on the drive touch the case and powered it on (there's a way to get a new drive, hehe).
Maybe I'm being unfair and they have gotten better, but I as well as many coworkers from that tech shop won't touch the things ever again.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.