Seagate Personal Storageâ„¢ 5000XT 250 GB FireWire 400 (1394a) Hard Drive

Pros: Good price, performance was good and so far very reliable.
Cons: The one touch feature. It did not work for me.

I bought two of these last year because I wanted to store videos, digital pictures, etc. I did not put much expectations into the performance due to the price I paid for them but they perform quite well. You can use USB 1.1, 2.0 or firewire ...

Pros: Fast - especially with Fire Wire. Easy Set Up - No Problems. TONS of storage!!
Cons: None.

Price per gig, this was the way to go. I feel so comfortable now that I have my entire collection of music and hundred of photos at my fingertips with no strain on my system and tons more space to boot. Moreover, you can take this thing wherever you ...

Pros: Reliable, quiet, fast
Cons: No power switch, one touch feature only really works with bundled software

I felt compelled to stick up for this drive after reading a couple of poor reviews here ! I bought mine when they were first released nearly 2 years ago and it has never missed a beat. It gets bounced around in a laptop bag or backpack, thrown around in aircraft cabin baggage, left on for days on end, and hasn't even hicupped. The transfer rates with firewire are fantastic, USB 2.0 is more than acceptable, USB 1.0 - don't bother ! It is used daily for large transfers of video and audio files and although it does run a little hot, it's quiet, quick, and reliable. The only drawback is the lack of a power switch which has been rectified in later models, and the one-touch backup feature only really works with the bundled retrospect software of which I'm not a big fan. If you've got tons of video and audio files you will love these drives !

Pros: fast drive.
Cons: Short, unpredictable lifetime and poof goes your data.

Maxtor 5000xt external drive runs great until it crashes and you lose all your data. Lifetime is about a year. Do not trust this drive to hold any important data.

Pros: Lots and lots of storage.
Cons: unreliable, runs too hot, multiple drive failures, too expensive, poor technical support,

I've bought four of these 250GB drives (technically 3 because they won't let me buy this model any longer) In the last year I've had two of them fail (good thing I back up all my data) and I had the third one corrupt data on an additional drive. Currently the drive is not allowing me to copy my files to other drives. Maxtor tech support isn't really sure what to do. Definetely not the right solution if you can't back up your data.

Another excellent Maxtor product. I almost bought the 180GB predecessor of this model, but waited for the 250GB 5000xt and got more bang for my buck. Incredible storage, lightning fast, more like having an internal drive on the system bus than an external one.