On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, admin@kclinux.net wrote:

> That's not a bad price at all.  It's about $10 cheaper online w/ s&h
> included, but I'd rather go get it now than wait 5 - 7 days and having
> the hassle of returning it if it arrives broken.  Though I do hear alot
> of horror stories about Maxtor's drives.  If you see a good deal on a
> Western Digital w/ 8MB buffer, let me know.  :)

Big difference between a good and bad drive.  I bought one of those bad
Maxtor 160GB drives.  Within minutes of filling up the drive, I started
getting bad sectors.  Lots of them.  I exchanged it for another and this
one appears to be a good one.  The ide-smart utility has not detected any
quality degradation for nearly a year since I had it.

Hopefully, that won't change if I ever have to power down the computer.  
I heard horror stories about starting up drives that never been powered
down.  Its been running non-stop since I installed it.

Maybe I was a bit harsh when I installed the first one, lightly tapping it
against the rails.  And sneezed.  Oooops.