Seagate Personal Storage 5000DV 160 GB FireWire 400 (1394a) Hard Drive

Pros: Cost effective, compatible with USB1, USB2.0, Firewire,
Cons: Crashed 3 months after warranty expired

Update Oct 05 I had sent the unit back for a warranty repair, I think due to a virus before the warranty expired. Then, About 3 months out of warranty, I heard a grinding sound coming from the unit without warning. There was no way to access the files. ...

Pros: Easy to install, affordable for amt of storage, expandable, One Touch bkup, 7200 RPM
Cons: Uses external power cord

B A C K G R O U N D First, let me state that I'm not the most computer savvy person out there. The Maxtor 5000DV was actually recommended to me by a friend (computer expert) after hearing me lament about the amount of space that music and movies ...

Pros: Quiet
Cons: No on-off switch. Data loss and boot failure every few months.

First, the good news. The Maxtor 5000DV is lot quieter than the other drives I saw. Now, the bad news. There's no power switch. The one-touch backup software is pretty worthless. And now, the really bad news. My Maxtor 5000 worked fine for the ...

Pros: It worked as expected for ten months and six months
Cons: Unreliable, unreliable, unreliable

Reviews that don't discuss reliability of a hard drive have limited usefulness. How important will noise, speed or capacity seem when all of a sudden, it stops working? I bought a OneTouch DV5000 160GB in May 2003. It failed in March 2004, losing all ...

Pros: None that matter.
Cons: Failures, failures, failures

Two other reviews here describe how examples of this drive failed, with all the effort required to cope.

We bought upwards of ten of these drives. By now, less than 2 years later, at least five have failed.

This sort of performance is not the solution to any problem I actually have.

Pros: Fast, quiet (when it works)
Cons: Very unreliable

I have had numerous problems with this drive. The drive that I bought failed after about 5 months, so Maxtor sent me a refurbished drive. This hard drive lasted just until the warranty for the first drive expired (about 7 more months). I am never going to buy another Maxtor drive again. I've never had any problems like this with Western Digital drives.