Strengths: size, power switch, triple interface

Weaknesses: questionable reliability

Summary: So far mine works well. It is a little slow to transfer, but I haven't used the Firewire 800. It is just as fast as any other USB 2.0 / FW400 drive. Maxtor drives have been good to me so far and I like the true on/off switch.

Strengths: None whatsoever

Weaknesses: BOTH 500 GB hard drives crashedBad Customer Service

Summary: MAXTOR / SEAGATE has a proven track record of unreliability:(1) In 2005, I installed a Maxtor 250GB internal hard drive and it went bad after 6 months. They replaced it and then that one also went bad in 6 months. Luckily I didn't lose any data. They finally upgraded to a higher level (possibly enterprise) drive that then worked.(2) In 2006, I lost of 60 gigabytes of data using Maxtor's 1 Terabyte One Touch Turbo (dual 500MB) external hard drive unit. Both drives contained the same data (Raid 1 mirroring), but BOTH DRIVES CRASHED at the same time!! This is not rare as people say. If the fan goes bad, you're done for.To further add insult to injury, Maxtor technical support had me jumping through hoops. They had ME disassemble the unit. Then they made me wait over a month to receive a controller card, which I then had to install into the unit while giving giving me instructions over the telephone. I honestly felt like I was in an episode of "24" and I was the some guy on the street who was unwittingly drawn into disarming a nuclear warhead as he was being given instructions over the phone.Ultimately, Maxtor did nothing except provide me with another unit with no data. They refused to help me restore any data and they did not even express concern or act like they were sorry.(3)In January of 2008, I plugged in a Maxtor 250 GB external drive that I hardly use and it didn't even work.Additionally, Maxtor makes drives for other manufacturers (possibly for LaCie). So, you need to look under the hood before buying such an important piece of equipment.Conclusion: Buy WESTERN DIGITAL hard drive units, many of which don't even use a cooling fan. Get their drives that have at least a 3-year warranty. They are the most reliable drives available. See BEST HARD DRIVES & STORAGE above.

Strengths: Decent seek times, quiet at first

Weaknesses: WAY loud after normal use

Summary: Bought this from a local retailer for about $329, decent deal to replace the aging (and suddenly shot) LaCie BigDisk 1TB that died within a day or my purchase of the Maxtor. I felt lucky and vindicated in my decision, and the drive has been nice up until about 3 weeks ago.A couple of minor points are annoying me now, notably the noise. The drive is no longer as whisper quiet as it once was. I'm not asking it to do much, but am asking for it to be available for mass storage of television tapings from my iMac's EyeTV, and to store my iTunes collection. Besides those, it's storing a LOT of files (nearly 0.5TB). The drive will report no errors, but thw whirring sound is not reassuring and I'm anticipating a sudden failure in my future (it's how I suspected my LaCie was on the way south). The positives are that the case seems to disspate heat well, and the fan does work. I'm concerned, however, that the sound is a harbinger of certain doom in the future, and I'm not inclined to by another Maxtor unless this improves. Thankful I have a 1 year warranty, but concerned that a storage and backup device needs another storage and backup device as a failover.

Strengths: Size, Triple Interface, Quiet

Weaknesses: Unreliable. Will fail, just give them a month or two.

Summary: I was looking for a 1TB to archive video and a second to backup the archive. Thanks goodness I bought a backup. After 2 months I came into work on Monday morning to find the main drive was dead. Fortunately I was able to restore from the backup drive. I ran the diagnostics on the second drive and it came up with an error code saying that I needed to return the drive. There went the first two. I returned them both and was sent refurbished drives as replacements. Not being able to wait more than a month for the replacements to arrive I bought 2 WD external 1 TB drives as cover. The replacements arrived and I have hardly used them as a result of having the WD drives. One of the replacement drives has now become locked in sleep mode. Now matter what I do I can't arrouse it. I had used it to backup a computer while restoring windows, now I can't retrieve the data. I was told they would replace the drive and it would cost between $700 & $2,500 to recover the data!!!! Needless to say I will never buy another Maxtor

Strengths: Tripple interface is great as is the ability to have external raid.

Weaknesses: Mine died in 2 months, with minimal usage and transport. No advanced shippment of replacement drive, so you have to figure out what to do with all that data while you wait two weeks for replacement

Summary: Maxtor was recently acquired by Seagate. They are still working out some of the customer service kinks, but quickly established an RMA. The setup was easy and the diagnostic software worked - it discovered the error, but seagate tech support said the code was encrypted and couldn't tell me what it meant.

Strengths: Compact, easy to install, quiet, fast, flexible, Macintosh freindly

Weaknesses: Non-competitive price, proprietary setup utility

Summary: Since this is my first 1TB drive, I can't make any comparisons except as a shopper, I needed a 1TB RAID1 array to fit in a small AV cabinet, and this was the only option that fit. The external transformer brick is what keeps the shape down, and fortunately I had room for it. The case design and material are both aesthetically pleasing, even if the colors don't mach the iMac white. This drive is far quieter than my other external drives, which was unexpected. It setup like a dream, however I was expecting to be able to use OSX Disk Utility to configure it as RAID1. Instead you must use the provided Maxtor utility. I had no other problems installing or configuring this drive. One nice feature is the ability to configure the front panel button to launch an application of your choice (in my case, iTunes). While I probably could have spent less to build my own 1TB+ array of SATA drives, the cost of my time required would have exceeded the savings. This is an ideal turnkey solution for a Mac user who needs a RAID0 or RAID1 array for Video editing, PVR, or A/V library purposes.

Strengths: fast,efficient, cheap for the money

Weaknesses: partitioned into 3 drives instead of one big 1tb drive

Summary: this monster capacity drive has amazed me with fast and efficient work. it is quite cheap for the mone- got it at buy.com for $440 with google checkout. easy to install-nice back up feature. the negative( only one so far) is the fact that it has 3 subdrives 300gb,200gb,500gb instead of one big one- thereby forcing me to fragment my work. however there is also a positive in it - you can create multiple redundancies within one huge drive by saving it in two separate ghard drives. overall- great buy