Price Alert: 250 gig Maxtor $99 (no rebates-yay) 1 year warrenty-CompUSA Ad

Didn't someone recently say that the newer Maxtors with 16MB caches don't work well in Replays?

But if you do decide to buy this drive, check out Staples first. Staples are advertising a 200G Maxtor for $90 - $30 rebate = $60. But when I went in today, they were out of stock/backordered, and were substituting the 250G model for $60 without rebate.

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Right, but you buy 4, throw them into a linux box, PC, or Mac and you have a TB of DVA space for almost nothing.

I stumbled across this thread while searching for a discussion of the supposedly superior quality of the relatively new Maxtor "QuickView" HDDs (with 5400rpm + Fluid Dynamic Bearing Motors [FDBs], etc.).


The older Maxtor DiamondMax 16 HDDs and the newer Maxtor QuickView HDDs actually share the same Maxtor Model Numbers, so I guess they're clearing out the ones with the DiamondMax 16 labels, because I found this deal earlier tonight:

$70 Maxtor 4R120L0 "DiamondMax 16" 120GB HDD, at iSellSurplus.com


Plus, iSellSurplus.com is only charging a total of $5 S&H for everything in your shopping cart until Monday Night (2/28/05), so you really might want to check them out this weekend.


(FWIW, I bet the list prices for the Maxtor HDDs with a "QuickView" label will be going way up, and soon.)

So, if one guy said he had a problem with these drives, and another guy says he now has 5 of them (3 300GB and 2 250GB) working perfectly with NO problems (I did have a problem in one, but that was traced to a bad image as the new image has had that drive working just fine)....


...what is the probability that the Maxtors really have a problem?


and remember, show your work.

I had two 300 gig diamond max 10 hard drives with 16 meg buffers and both did not work in 2 different replays. When I first slapped them in they would appear to be rock solid, and after a few days would self-destruct (continuous rebooting, replay guide corruption, reseting to default settings, phantom shows and more)! No amount of low-level reformating or different ways of copying seemed to mater. A subsequent 400 gig seagate worked just fine on the first try! Now Maxtor might have quietly 'fixed' the problem by now (it was late 2004 when I tried this) and I'm sure the quickview has different firmware from the diamond max 10's and most likely work well in a replay. I like the maxtors better because the 250 gig and 100 gig maxtors I have in other replays are quieter than the 400 gig seagate.

I had four 300GB DiamondMax 10 hard drives with 16MB cache and they did not work in my two ReplayTV 5500's. When I first installed them they would appear to be rock solid, and after a few days would self-destruct (continuous rebooting, replay guide corruption, resetting to default settings). No amount of low-level reformatting or different ways of copying seemed to matter. At first, I thought that it was because I had installed dual drives. Now, I think it is the Maxtors and a compatibility issue.

Could someone please recommend the brand/model of the largest drive that works in the ReplayTV 5500?

look for a thread by pu82, i think he tested a 400gb seagate that worked well