Seagate Personal Storage 5000LE 80 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive

Pros: Quite, reliable high capacity drive.
Cons: None

There has been a virtual explosion in the popularity and availability of external hard drive. Perha ...

Pros: Works well enough, for about a year
Cons: Breaks right after a year, after warranty expires, and loses a year's worth of data

I bought this hard drive less than 2 years ago. It worked well enough for about a year, the length of the product warranty. However, after a year, the hard drive started malfunctioning. When I called in to see what Maxtor could do about it, they told me ...

Pros: a ton of space. quiet. easy set up
Cons: only way to turn off when not using is unplugging it

I purchased the 80g drive two weeks ago. So far it works great. I changed the format to ntfs with no ...

Pros: Seeems to work ok once I configured it
Cons: Support web site is user hostile

The product CD has a file named \English\Maxtor US User's Guide.pdf. You might think this would have the user's guide? When you open it, it says "An electronic copy of the User's guide for ... is available on the Maxtor web site at www.maxtorsupport.com.

Maybe so, but I can't find it on the web site. Why not include some sort of user's guide on the CD?

The installation is focused on use of the Dantz backup software. I already have better software for backup management & don't want to use the free software. There are directions for how to install only the drivers but not the Dantz software, but the directions do not work. Eventually I figured out how to download the drivers from the web site & that worked.

Finally, I bought the 80GB to replace a Maxtor 40GB that quit working. So reliability may be an issue.