Maxtor is good maker. I rest your worries, I work part time for years for pc shop is selling machines with all kinds of HDs, IBM, Qs, Maxs, Seagates, WDs etc. We recently kicked out WD lineup from our new machines due to quality, compatiablity issues (very serious), Q lineup shrank to uselessness due to LCTs and CX-KA era screwups by our supplier, but newer ones like KX, KS and Max's Qs are good so far but no longer available. Max and IBM are what we have left to choose from for using with new machines and parts we sell. Dodged the 75GXP bullet since we couldn't sell these at prices customers is willing to pay for given capacity till IBM came out with 60GXP and Max w/ 7200rpm. Prices on both went below $200 for 20GB are what we able to include them with our new systems and for parts. So far for last 4 years we have good record regearding the Max, Q and IBM (aside from 75GXP we didn't use due to prices back then). What drives us nuts we cannot get IDE Seagate drives from that same suppiler that used to sell those in past till 9GB years ago. Seagate are also good drives but we cannot obtain them. I'm mystified at that change. Makers should have kept selling 5GB to 15GB range because our customer base are still using 486, pentiums and older machines, and many are unwilling to jump for low-end 20GB for their machines to replace overstuffed HD or ones that failed. Even the low end 20GB 5.4K rpm is decently inexpesnive but these will cause problems in these older machines. FYI: Used little HDs (2GB to 10GB) ones are in demand around here and our used HD shelf of those kind are bare and the other supplier specializing in selling pulls or NOS on older parts dried up or disappeared. Cheers, Wizard

I did touch on the issues w/ drives greater than 8GB on older machines including that older pentiums. I have seen that even 10GB made machine's bios choke (lock up) or bizzare compatiablities. Promise fasttrak ATA100 PCI costs about $60-75 here. AT to ATX transition is still ongoing and new AT surper7 w/ AGP is about 120 and cpu for it if customer wants bit of upgrade is about 70-100 (P5 233mmx thru AMD K6-2 500, $15 ball bearing fan/heatsink, $40 for 128MB SDRAM. Don't forget we charge fixed servicing charge of $35. Basically, new body car rolling on 4 10" tires w/ tired parts from other old car stuffed into it pulling along that heap with screaming Geo's 1.0L 3 cylinder engine. Got the point yet? Recently lot of people broke out of woods after we started selling special package that supplier unexpectedly found susplus of their unsold stuff. ATX case w/ 250W PSU, K7M w/ onboard audio, yes that crappy but good enough for them! :-)), heatsink, Athlon 800 for $220. Does work w/ original win95 if you don't mind no USB. M$ bastards :-P We have seen that same thing happen with late amd 486dx40 and SP97-V era when prices on cpu and board become reasonable. Not anymore now thanks to ATX cases and lack of socket A and 370 for AT cases except for horrible pcchips boards that we don't touch. Average upgrade prices customers pays is about 300 which is about right for their income tax refund. I found out soon after (we were straight Award bios user for eons, FYI.) on K7M's AMI PnP is broken but we managed to expect that. :-) No small wonder AMI is still minority because they didn't clean up their "broken" PnP. Award got it right in 486 PCI era, no wonder Asus didn't went for other types of bios. Here's the typical situation: A happy AMI machine, simply add a PCI card will upset all other attached resources means we had to go though hardware detection all over again on everything else not just that new part recently added. Award corrrectly functions and winblows detected just that new hardware we added, easy life. Spending new parts (over $100 and up) on $200 beaters is same idea for older computers. I't all to do with mystries of the customers' brains and we can't bend their ears around reality or else some of them may spook and ruin our reputation. snip Hehehe... I don't mean lower prices. Say, same price point on that range as 20GB for little new ones. Heck, when we had reseller who sells pulls we had brisk business there and everyone are satisfied. I kept bugging my boss and boss knows we need another source to buy those pulls. When we said selling Max for years we mean that because we depend on reliablity and compatilbity to keep our reputation. Seagate is being kicked for screwing around with bios on Barracuda IV that gave awful performance in raid array. WD is thrown out also because we had compatablity problems earlier on last year and this year on and most recently people is beating up WD for screwing them w/ a bad bios mid way on current drives that had good bios. In a nutshell, we have been doing fine w/ Maxtor for 4 years so far and RMA on those is very low per year, say 1 to 3 per year. Recently we started selling IBM drives because prices became reasonable that what customers is willing to pay for. Don't forget that along with this fuss, we sell new machines along w/ new monitor and all that trimmings also. Cheers, Wizard PS: Cirrus logic is still a problem on some hard drives especially if HD makers bios is not done correctly, what a POS.

I've had mixed luck with the XP32150's... I think the 32550N's would last longer. I've got a bad 32150 (wide SCSI differential version) downstairs... I've also got a bunch of Quantum Fireball drives that you can't kill. The problem seems to be based on which model Quantum -- some are good some are dogs. I thought all the IBM's were great until I heard about the problems with their 60gb and up stuff... Bill Bill -- d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now! bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@ureach.com

What I find noteable is that I've never needed service from Quantum, while I have plenty of experience with Seagate, not all bad, however. My experience with Western Digital, unfortunately, hasn't been so good, however. I gave away a dozen and a half still-sealed-in-the-antistatic-bag drives last year, because the oldest of them had been replaced 4 times under warranty, and the newest, 7 times. These were WD21200's, originally purchased as 31200's, but replaced with the two-platter variety as service required. My oldest drives are either Quantum or Shugart (8" AC-spindle types). My oldest 5-1/4" drives are Seagate, though they're only weeks older than my oldest Shugart and Tandon 5-1/4" drives. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Pechter" <pechter(a)bg-tc-ppp1458.monmouth.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2001 4:50 PM Subject: Re: Seagate ST32550N vs Quantum XP32150 - which is better? into drives with