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Thunderbird · Mar 8, 2001, 09:52 PM

I've heard much chatter about problems with Maxtor Firewire drives, although it seems to have quieted down in recent weeks. Have the problems with Maxtor drives been fixed, or are people still having trouble with them? I'm thinking about buying the 80 GB Maxtor Firewire (Staples.com $350 after coupon). It seems like a good price, on par with many USB drives that I have seen. Do these drives work with OS X? OS 9?

Owners? What is your opinion?

ddiokno · Mar 9, 2001, 04:59 AM

I find my Maxtor 80GB and invaluable tool that I have with me everyday. It works great for storing iMovies and also backing up files from my hard drive... i have not had any problems with it.
dave

Mar 11, 2001, 11:25 AM

I have an 80gig Maxtor drive also and for backing up and storing MP3's and movies it is great. It is quite slow however.

If you plan to use it for DV work, buy a LaCie. The Maxtor could not quite keep up resulting in sporatic skipped frames. On playback also, periodically a DV stream will stutter from the Maxtor, but not from the La Cie I also have.

The 20gig La Cie cost ~380 as did the Maxtor 80gig, it appears to be an issue of a faster drive in the La Cie.

ddiokno · Mar 11, 2001, 05:07 PM

I'd have to say that it is very equivalent to my Western Digital and LaCie Firewire HD's... haven't noticed any big differences...
dave

Thunderbird · Mar 12, 2001, 09:53 AM

What is the actual formatted capacity of the drive?

Also, how fast is it? Is anybody using one to capture video in iMovie or Final Cut Pro? Will it handle that without dropping frames?

ddiokno · Mar 12, 2001, 10:50 AM

Originally posted by Thunderbird:
What is the actual formatted capacity of the drive?

Also, how fast is it? Is anybody using one to capture video in iMovie or Final Cut Pro? Will it handle that without dropping frames?

I have mine at home, but will check on the capacity tonight and get back to you...

My wife uses it much more than I do with iMovie and is very pleased with the results. i can't say that I've seen her class videos stutter, but then again I'm not looking at it witha director's eye. If you are looking for professional quality, high grade work, then I would recommend something with a 7200 RPM speed, but if it is for everyday home movie editing, this should be just fine. I know my wife would complain to me (and even worse, her students, who have a very discerning eye) if there were problems with video capture...
dave

Bubba Jones · Mar 13, 2001, 04:15 PM

I would like to sing my praise about the ClubMac FW Drives. 60 gigs, $349 currently, 7200 rpm drive. This thing is great. Plenty of Final Cut work done with it. Works great even through my orange micro firewire card on my G4/8600 with ATI Radeon card. That's a whole lot of third party incompatability there, but absolutely no problems. Works even better on my Pismo.

milhaus · Mar 15, 2001, 10:09 PM

Dude,
Some things you need to know about Maxtor drives: they have had a history of major complaints associated with them (firewire drives). Go to the MacFixit forums and you'll see serious evidence of some problems. I don't know whether or not these have been fixed.
As for Lacie drives, they are now all 7200RPMs, as opposed to the Maxtors which are 5400rpms. Actually they are all 7200 Maxtors inside now, where they used to be IBM Deskstars. There has recently been a major price drop in the full size drives. They're now cas cheap or cheaper than the 5400 Maxtors. But I've heard the fan is really loud.

birkinshawc · Mar 16, 2001, 08:05 AM

Don't buy a maxtor fw drive!

I got one - first one was dead on arrival. Returned it, only to find that the replacement crashed my machine every 5 minutes or so when reading mp3s etc.

Sent it back, and the retailer confirmed that there were problems, so I got a refund. I'm now buying a 46Gb deskstar to fit internally, should work out easier in the long run, faster, and much cheaper.

BTW: friend has FW Lacie CD writer, it has a VERY noisy fan - have to turn it off when not writing.

pdjr · Mar 16, 2001, 09:34 AM

I have had constant problems with my 80gb external.

9.1
512MB RAM
VM off

I've tried a number of fixes that are contained in a very long www.macfixit.com thread on the topic to no avail; however, I have been pretty stable by using these steps.

Turn off VM -- Don't ask me why. It reduces the dreaded "red-light" stuck problem.

Disable the three FireSCSI entensions if you have no programs that need them. Retrospect, Toast and other need these extensions. They trick software into thinking it's using a SCSI drive when the software doesn't support FireWire hard drives.

Disable the Maxtor FireWire extension. (By doing this, you won't be able to format the drive/partitions. For some reason, DiskRepair 8.6 says the drive is unsupported.) Note: see the Total Recall Software advice below.

Upgrade to FireWire 2.7. It is a part of 9.1.

Turn on the drive prior to booting.

If at all possible, never turn the drive off. If I get it to mount successfully and then turn the drive off after shutting my computer down, I have to unplug and then replug the drive for my computer to register it.

Some have speculated that the Maxtor driver sux. I certainly haven't crashed as frequently since disabling that extension.

In addition, one poster at www.macfixit.com recommended using FireWire 2.7 in addition to a generic FireWire driver from a company called Total Recall Software. Here's the www.versiontracker link: http://versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=8796. According to comments on versiontracker, one can use Heat Utilities to format and partition a drive. I have not tested this because one of the posters also says that it is buggy when used with System 9.1.

I'm deathly afraid that my drive is so unstable. I really wish this problem would be resolved. I have 60+GB of music on the drive so I can't make a total backup unless I wanted to spend days making backup MP3 CDs.

Good luck. Anyone else have ideas?

birkinshawc · Mar 16, 2001, 10:37 AM

I tried all the "fixes", VM off etc. but it still crashes. I heard that happens on some other brands too, so maybe a certain type of FW to IDE bridgeboard used in some drives isn't 100% mac compatible.

Steve in Seattle · Mar 16, 2001, 12:38 PM

I'm using a Maxtor 80GB Firewire hard drive on a 400 MHz Firewire PowerBook with OS 9.1. I have had absolutely no problem whatsoever. I thoroughly satisfied.

Thunderbird · Mar 23, 2001, 10:31 PM

Has anybody tried this drive with OS X? Does it work?

pharmelink · Apr 2, 2001, 03:46 PM

Am also getting same issues as users here at this closed link: http://www.macfixit.com/ultimate/For...ML/013529.html
My setup (G3 beige, Orange Micro, Maxtor 40GB, 9.1) and am getting a new drive shipped to me.
BUT am very curious on the post that talked about ROM versions on the drive indicated as part of the Model number (last 2 digits). I have the 00 ROM, just got off Tech Support at Orange Micro where they have a Maxtor (01), Orange Micro card, VM off, Maxtor software and they have no issues. They were very interested on the possible ROM issue.

Just recieved my replacement drive and it has the 01 number. It also has no on/off switch any more, and the instructions say disable Conflict Catcher. Am hoping this solves my issues. After two days, things are running much better (one lockup). Will post my latest results here.

Paul

Apr 3, 2001, 06:53 AM

I have the Maxtor FireWire Drive (80 Gig) and OS X works fine.