Maxtor 1tb external USB hard disk

Anorakus

Anorakus

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I just got one of these bad boys to make viewing my pics easier :nuts:


Pro's:

  • Does what it says on the box. It comes pre-formatted as NTFS (compatible with XP and Vista), so if you're running either of these, plug in and go. If you've got a Mac, you can reformat it (but see Con's)
  • Pretty fast for a USB drive. Copying a CD-ROM's worth of data (around 650mb) takes under a minute
  • Quiet, small and unobtrusive - can be stood vertically
  • Automatically powers down with the PC (you need to plug directly into the PC rather than through a powered hub for this to work properly)
  • Comes with a 3 year warranty


Con's:

  • Your PC's BIOS might not recognise such a big drive, which means Windows won't recognise it properly either if you boot with the drive connected. This happened to me with my new(ish) Dell laptop. The solution that worked for me was to disable USB ennumeration in the BIOS - this forces the OS to recognise the drive first, all hunky dory.
  • If you have a Mac or are otherwise tempted to do a full format of the disk, be aware that it takes around 20 hrs :eek:


I've worked out what will hopefully be a secure storage strategy for my pics (all in RAW format, around 12-18mb per pic). I burn the RAW files to CD-R, which then get filed away with contact sheets I make in Lightroom. The RAW files then get moved to the Maxtor, where I can mess around with them in Photoshop. If the drive fails in few years, no permanent loss.

A.
 
1Tb!!

I doubt I would ever sleep at night storing all my photos in one place lol. I know you have the discs but if it did fail (fingers crossed it won't) how many cd's/dvd's would that be for re-installing :gag:

I guess I'm a born coward lol
 
To be honest with you I couldn't sleep either with all my photos on a disk this size......I'd have to buy two and have one as a back up drive.

Even if you where writing them to blu-ray discs at 50gig a time thats still a lot of discs!

Simon
 
Price and from where?
 
I use a 750Gb eSATA external drive as a back up. It transfers files much much quicker than
USB or Firewire. . OK you need a eSATA card in the computer, but that only takes minutes to fix.

Formatting. It's a LaCie unit so it was pre formated for Mac. All my drives are NTFS so it needed re formating. Took about a hour.
 
I used to swear by Maxtor, unitl I had three of them fail in a year, I don't expect they are worse than anybody elses but a terrabyte is a potential huge loss of data so don't rely on it.
 
Steep said:
I used to swear by Maxtor, unitl I had three of them fail in a year, I don't expect they are worse than anybody elses but a terrabyte is a potential huge loss of data so don't rely on it.
Click to expand...

People were saying that a few years ago about 1Gb drives.

The whole idea of these drives is to have an external back-up of what you have on your PC/Mac If it fails you still have the original files, if the PC's drive fails you have the external files - Personally I have 2 x 500Gb external drives - One at home plugged into the PC and one in my desk drawer at work which comes home about once a month to be syncronised with the PC.
Therefore I have 3 x copies of my important files etc.
 
I used to swear by Maxtor, unitl I had three of them fail in a year

Ditto. I lost a couple. Now I just swear at them!
 
Maxtor do not get a good rep on the computer forums. Youre much better with Western Digita or Samsung etc.
 
would a RAID setup be more applicable storing this amount of data. IF one disk goes down you should be able to recover all of your files :)
 
chameleon said:
Maxtor do not get a good rep on the computer forums. Youre much better with Western Digita or Samsung etc.
Click to expand...

Funnily enough the WD I looked at had a 2 year warranty, compared with 3 for the Maxtor.

If it does go belly-up within the warranty period, I'll have a new hard disk out of them :)

A.
 
My Western Digital Mybook went belly up. lost all photos but they were a back up to the photos on my pc!... so i still had them!

Got to get a new one now. But it wont be WD... nor Maxtor now ive read this!!
 
Anorakus said:
Funnily enough the WD I looked at had a 2 year warranty, compared with 3 for the Maxtor.

If it does go belly-up within the warranty period, I'll have a new hard disk out of them :)

A.
Click to expand...

. . . but it still won't recover the lost data :'(
 
I make sure I have a full backup on another disk. I have a 250Gig in an external enclosure which has a full backup of my photos, docs n settings and my entire C drive!
Alternatively Raid 1 is a good idea too.
 
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