to 120 gb

I'm writing this after being up half the night troubleshooting the installation of this drive. The drive itself works fine but the MaxBlast3 software is worthless.

In the accompanying documentation, Maxtor "strongly recommends" that you format and partition the drive with MaxBlast3 instead of using Win XP's disk management utility.

I did as they recommended and encountered the following problems:

1) the program would not run from within Windows

2) the program did run after I booted from the Maxtor CD, but after it formatted and supposedly copied my old boot drive onto the new partition the partition was unreadable (I checked it from within Windows after booting from my original drive, and it was impossible to boot from it after I had laboriously reconfigured my drives, jumpers, cables etc.)

3) So after reinstalling a couple of times and rereading all the documentation several times, always with the same result, I went to the support section of the Maxtor webside and, lo and behold, 2 days ago they updated their FAQ for this installation to declare that you should install the drive using the Windows XP disk management utility." Exactly the opposite of what the accompanying manuals said. This also meant that although I was able to format and partition the drive I was not able to copy my old boot drive onto the new partition which Maxtor claimed you could do with their software.

4) Also, if you don't need the ultra ATA 133 card (my motherboard supports ATA 133 already) I advise you not to install the card. I tried it out and it caused problems with my sound card.

So, to sum up, the software doesn't work and the free ATA card is probematic but the drive seems to work fine.

I have several Maxtor drives on various machines mostly because they tend to be cheaper (I got this drive for $... after rebates) and they have always worked fine, but next time I need a new hard disk I'm seriously thinking about going with Western Digital and just paying the extra bucks.

I HAVE A NON-STOP NETWORK WITH TEN OF THESE DRIVES FOR ABOUT A YEAR NOW, AND NEVER HAVE I HAD TO FIDDLE WITH THEM. THEY ARE EXELENT DRIVES FOR THERE PRICE. MINE YOU, THAT NON-STOP MEANS THAT THEY ARE ON AND NON-STOP CONDITIONS MEANING ALWAYS SPINING, IF YOU WILL.
I LOVE THIS DRIVES, SO IT SEEMS =), BYE BYE BYE

I still dont know why, till this day, why are people still using maxtor and western digital. These two drives are among the worst ive come across. They may be cheap but they are also a pain in the rear end. I have heard people that i know saying that their M and WD drives dying on them the first day they get it or within a few years, especially if u put stressful use on them. Can u imagine having problems just installing and OS alone. I tried installing OS from 95 to WinXP as well as the NT series of 2000 and up. That is exactly what i got when i first started using either these two drives in the PCs that i sell. From then on i have never used tham again. All my life and all my sold PCs are using Seagate and Quantum Drives, and i have never never had anyone one of them die on me neither of them gave me any problems when installing any OSs either. Wheather i leave them internally or carry it around to copy things from other PCs i never have any problems. I even have a 13 gig from 6 or 7 years ago still using today without a problem. I know quantom drives are harder to get in the US, but seagate is still my second choice in durability and software + OSs installation compatibility. Lets put it this way, i love quantoms drives so much i had my cousin ship them straight from taiwan, where they are made to me in the US. Also since i sell PCs i have to give waranties for the ones that i sell, and i have never had a HD problem before.