I concur with everything said above. I have had nothing but problems with Maxtor over the years. The few seagates i have owned were not the greatest either. My WD on the other hand have always done me justice.
In fact just had a Seagate dye on me this very week. 5 years old. But my 4 year old WD is still kicking strong with just as much use to it.
I have one in my server right now... Has 8 bad sectors on it... But thankfully Spinrite recovered them sectors and supposedly marked them bad, but I am waiting for other sectors to be bad here soon, 8 year old 40gb drive...