Maxtor shows new storage products
By Marc Perton 
posted April 10th 2006 1:11PM
posted April 10th 2006 1:11PM
We're still trying to cut
through the jargon in Maxtor's latest press release (which may be the first we've seen that actually manages to fit
"Web 2.0" and "tipping point" into a single sentence), but once you manage to pare it down, it
turns out the company is announcing one new product, teasing about another, and providing some more info about a deal
we checked out earlier. The new product is the Maxtor Shared Storage II, a NAS for home and office users, offering RAID
storage, gigabit Ethernet and up to 1TB of space. The teased product is the One Touch III Mini Edition (pictured), a
one-inch thick drive that can hold up to 100GB of data and which will, according to Maxtor, include "an industry
first." Details, including that "first," will be available later this month. Oh, and the deal? As we previously noted,
Maxtor's working with Fabrik on something called "Project Fusion," which sounds like an online backup service
that will take advantage of Maxtor's One Touch interface to make it easier to store and share files on a hosted server.
Pricing is expected to range from a free service to one costing about $50 a year, depending on storage and feature
needs. We're looking forward to it; we need something that will, in Maxtor's words, help us "truly harness [our]
content."
100gb. wowzers.
Looks like a can of spam.
Given Maxtor's reliability concerns, does it mean that the drive will project a 3d holographic message of a harddrive malfunction exactly 5 seconds after the fact?
// a bit bitter, had a few HD crashes, all Maxtor.
They just don't make reliable drives any more. It is not a question if the drive will fail, but when. I think it goes for any company. I have had 3 WD 200GB fail. One ext FW. Two internal.
Plus, nowadays, when you have a drive failure; it seems they will only replace it with a refurbished one without exceptions! Like that gives me confidence. As a matter of fact, one of the refurb replacements went out two weeks ago. No warning (XP doesn't monitor drive status, no apparent symptoms during use). Slam.
A month or so ago, looking for a small & portable backup solution, I spotted an external hard drive on the shelf in a store with a warranty of a whopping 6 months! Forgot the name, but ... 6 months?!
I have to add my two cents to this: DO NOT USE MAXTOR. I had three seperate drives fail on me in a week while cutting a documentary in school (everyone had bought the same type of drive when we started the class on the Prof's recommendation) and my team and I lost hours and hours of work...three times. And, of course, this was the week before the project was due.
Granted, this was a couple years ago, but it burned me badly enough that I will never, ever, ever use a product with the Maxtor name on it again.
I think the bigger the disk is the more prone to failure it is. I have a 80GB WD raptor and an 80 GB seagate for 2 years now that haven't failed yet. Yet my 300GB maxtor died 4 months after purchase and my 250GB WD died 12 months after purchase.
I've been using Maxtor for about 9 years now with no problems whatsoever. Only reason I use Maxtor is because the first brand I ever used (WesternDigital) failed on me a week after the warranty expired.
Hard drive reviews are humorously binary, the drive either crashed or it didn't. That said, the only data I have ever lost was due to maxtor.
Gents, don't forget that this is a external 100gb laptop-hdd. This means: No bulky power adapter, very very portable, and by this ideal for laptop use.