[wplug] OT - word of warning on Maxtor 250GB drives

[Vanco, Don]

Quite a few places are now blowing out these drives crazy-cheap (the
ATA-100 and ATA-133 versions, both 8MB cache).  I have quite a few of
these (like 2TB), and in the last month I have lost 3 of them.  All
under similar circumstances - when they near 75-80% full they start to
flake, shortly thereafter your data is toast.  On one RMA the
replacement drive I got went bad the day after I sent the failed drive
it was intended to replace back to Maxtor - I am in the process of
recalling that shipment and getting a replacement for the replacement to
attempt to recover the 180GB of data that drive holds.

3 year warranties be damned - warranties do nothing for your lost data,
just get you brand-new (or worse - refurbed) junk drives.  I am
officially off Maxtor/Seagate.  I'll stick with Hitachi - least
error-prone of the drives I have currently.

YMMV
Don