I haven't owned a Maxtor, but I have had a WD that went bad on me. 80 G drive, had it in the computer for maybe 3 months when the BIOS started reporting bad smart status. RMA'd it, and got a new one sent to me before I had to send the old one back. Heads must have been going bad, because I couldn't get all of my stuff of the old hard drive. I was royally p***ed off. I haven't had any problems with the new drive, yet, and I've had it about 4 months.