Maxtor Basics External Desktop Hard Drive review

The drive does look jolly good, however I'll bet it will be sold as a 1.5tb disk when it isn't. Surely this must be illegal, or at the least false advertising? Is there a way for drives to be increased in size internally to actually have the amount of space advertised after formatting? Otherwise we're justgoing to continue down this utterly false route.

By bubbles16 on 25 Aug 2009

I've got the 500GB version and it's close to perfect. Why? You plug it in and it just works; no software to install, no drivers, nothing. My (Vista) PC just sees it as a drive, instantly. It's also reasonably quiet, and the design, though simple, is also pleasing on the eye. Why pay more?

By Bureaunet on 25 Aug 2009

Yeah, I have a 1TB one which I use to store my backups of all my media editing. Perfect for storing my 300MB photoshop files, and 5GB raw video... at only just twice the price of burning a dvd-r, it certainly is amazing1

By all4nothing on 25 Aug 2009

bubbles16: I share your frustration, but strictly speaking the hard disk manufacturers are in the right. Multiple standards organisations have affirmed that the prefix "tera" denotes a multiple of 10^12, and not 2^40 - despite that being the more common usage in the computing industry.

It is annoying, though, and it's a problem that only gets worse as we come to deal with ever larger units of data. Every time you go up a prefix the discrepancy grows by 2.3%; so while a decimal megabyte is only 4.6% smaller than a binary one, the gap between a decimal petabyte and a binary one is a whole 11.2%.

By DarienGS on 26 Aug 2009

Don't buy one, I have got two that have failed after a few days. All they do is just make a hunting sound and a friend has had one that failed also after a few days use, he has had his replaced.

I have not had mine replaced yet as I have too much info on them and I am not sure if I have lost anything that I need.

Maxtor (Seagate) are not interested in replacing the control boards that I know is the problem, all thay can do is replace the complete unit.

DON'T BUY ONE

By harveylex on 27 Aug 2009