Beware Maxtor external drives - alternatives?

[Blue Ridge]

Thought I'd back up everything before installing PT7, and bought a Maxtor "One touch III" -- 300 gigs, $179.

Started on my Thinkpad laptop, to back it up first; installed the two small programs Maxtor includes and requires to handshake, and -- BOOM!!! It has blown out two of my programs (Norton and Spysweeper), both of which have "reinstall - damaged" messages, and I still can't open anything else.

Te Maxtor was recommended here on the DUC (MAC forum) because it has the Oxford chipset.

Back to Costco (and to my Thinkpad recovery disc!) ... Costco will take eveything if it doesn't work, and once in a while that policy has saved me big money.

Any decent alternatives? I was looking at a Western Digital 500 gig at Costco.

Thanks

Blue Ridge

[bb_aus]

in general Maxtors work well but there is no point in installing their software. its just bloatware, no need to use it. but then norton is crap anyway so mabey it did you a favour.

[NickH]

The Seagate hard disk drives have a very high reputation nowadays especially for audio use… Glyph use them & so do Carillon…

A nice Seagate barracuda in a Oxford chipset firewire enclosure & you can’t go wrong…

I really like theses:-

http://www.carillonusa.com/clnweb/ad1.jsp?country=US

I have an AD-1+ & can’t recommend them enough!

Cheers



N

[Obsidian Dragon]

Kinda along the same lines, I wouldn't put Antivirus nor Anti Spyware on my Protools machine as they impact the perormance too much. That is why most of us don't even connect our Protools systems on the Internet. No Internet, not much chance of viruses or spyware

[Aussie169]

I have a One Touch III 300 gig drive and it works fine.
Of course I don't use Maxtor's software. i just copy what I want manually.

[daeron80]

[snip]norton is crap anyway so mabey it did you a favour.

Norton Utils are useful for certain things, but you definitely want to run them from the CD. If you install any of it, the amount of CPU avail to PTLE will be noticeably reduced. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

[daeron80]

Kinda along the same lines, I wouldn't put Antivirus nor Anti Spyware on my Protools machine as they impact the perormance too much. That is why most of us don't even connect our Protools systems on the Internet. No Internet, not much chance of viruses or spyware

I think I've found Windows Defender to be light enough. It doesn't seem to take up regular CPU cycles, as long as you only use it to scan manually every few days. And, you know, if you avoid certain unhealthy sites and only open emails from people you trust, you'll seldom if ever get spyware and viruses, anyway. I haven't had one in 3 years, and I'm connected 24/7.

[roundmosound]

I have 2 Maxtor One Touch externals in my system. I didn't install their software. Both drives work very well for me with no problems.

[macr0w]

I have 3 Maxtor one touch external drives. One of which I've been running for over 2 years. Another for over a year and a new one I got about 3 months ago. They seem to work fine. I have recorded 12 tracks at least directly to them with a 64 sample buffer. No problems. (Yet )

[Blue Ridge]

Thanks for the feedback. I got the Maxtor "one-touch" because it was recommended on the DUC for the Mac -- where I have my Pro Tools (and don't do internet or antivirus).

However, I wanted to use the Maxtor for backing up our other computers (Thinkpads) too -- that's where the software came in. Nowhere in the Maxtor user guide did it say "you can ignore our software and use it like any other drive" -- wish I **had** seen it.

My wife is picking up the western Digital 500 "my book" today - we'll use it strictly as a backup drive and pray that it doesn't fail (rule: all drives eventually fail. Sigh.). It took me hours to walk the dog back (with a very pro Maxtor service agent) on my laptop. We never did figure out what the glitch was.

Thanks for the comments and help,

Blue Ridge