Some months back, roughly towards the start of this year, I bought a 200GB IDE Maxtor hard drive. After four or five months, it gave out, which surprised me completely. I figured with its one year warranty it would last at least that long. So I did what anyone would do – send the thing back in and get a new one under the warranty period. Maxtor in particular has a nice policy wherein you can have them send you the new one first and then you send the bad one back – in the proper packaging they sent you the first one in. This of course requires you send them your credit card number in case you try to screw them.

So all was well until the night before QuakeCon, when the replacement one gave way. I had to switch out for the 40GB one in my server so I could play games at QuakeCon. Oddly enough, I found myself hoping that this second drive was out of the warranty period – they do this thing where the replacement drive’s period is the original drive’s period, or 90 days, or plus 90 days, or something. Say what you will about Western Digital, I’ve got drives from theirs that can take normal use. Oddly enough everyone I talk to has no problem with Maxtor drives. I think they even pioneered the 200GB models.

However, the warranty period goes until October so I did what anyone would do – sent it in again. I got it back in last week and as I was opening the box I thought to myself that the least they could do was send me a better drive. Kinda like when you send in something and they don’t make it anymore. I guess that’s what happened since the drive they sent me was 250GB. That’s more additional space than the Windows boot volume I have (another 40GB WD drive). I never really bothered to do this but I think I could fit every game I have on this drive and still have space left over (how sad is it that I didn’t think that about my 200GB drive?).

We’ll see how this goes. Since I only keep crap like games on my second hard drive it’s far from the end of the world when it gives out, but it’s still annoying. If this thing lasts a year I’ll be happy (again, how sad is that?) but I think that, warranty be damned, if this one goes out I’m through with Maxtor as a brand.

Fool me Once…shame on…shame on you…Folmuah can’t get fooled again