to 120 gb

I've had this drive in my system for about a year to store MP3's and videos. I should have backed up all of my files because my old harddrive has failed, and with 200GB of storage, you won't run out very quickly. Mine came with the ATA card, and it was easy to install. It has worked fine, and quietly ever since and I am pleased with the purchase.

This is a great drive. It's fast (about twice as fast as my other 2 and 3 year old 7200rpm drives) and it's silent and seems to be reliable. It's also at a great price for the capacity, and it's Maxtor, a trusted name in hard drives. I got the ATA card with mine, but I used another Silicon Image card I purchased previously (it has the same features but gave less problems, my computer took longer than it should to start up with the Maxtor ATA card). The MaxBlast software worked perfectly and never gave me any trouble. All those giving bad reviews because of the software or lack of card need to stop complaining. The point is, the actual hard drive is great, and you won't go wrong purchasing it. I like it so much, I decided to purchase the 160 gig version to replace two of my other hard drives.

Over the years I have had more than one system brought to its knees by the 'MaxBlast' partitioning software. DO NOT USE IT.

If your OS (Operating System) cannot properly partition and format the drive to full capacity, then seek out one of the third-party programs that does it properly (e.g. Partition Magic).

If the problem is with the BIOS (and not the OS) then upgrade the BIOS. If there is no upgrade (mfg out of business) then do not get a drive larger than your current BIOS supports.

For those souls who bought this package expecting the ADVERTISED (still as of 24 Jan 2004) ATA card to be included then if it is not complain to your State Attorney General's Office of Consumer Protection. AMAZON is, or at least used to be, a Washington State company: WA has one of the strongest Consumer Protection offices in the country & it would be worthwhile contacting them, as well as the Better Business Bureau. If a company is going to advertise something then the company should sell what it advertises - anything else if fraud. Amazon is usually good about resolving these sorts of conflicts - do not know why they apparently are not doing so with this one.

Maxtor drives are not my favorites, they are not as durable as many (I have a Maxtor 40GB external USB drive dying as I write this) but they are OK for the money (they are CHEAP) - but the MaxBlast Software is simply a time-bomb waiting to blow up for system.

Avoid the Blast.