Digital Trends

Maxtor 5000DV Personal Storage

May 15th, 2003 | by Ian Bell

Test and Benchmarks

In our eTesting Labs WinBench 99 tests using the FireWire interface, the 500DV scored in between our Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Plus 160 GB Serial ATA drive and our Maxtor D540X 160 GB hard drive with a beginning transfer rate of 39,900 bytes/sec and an ending transfer rate of 32,100 bytes/sec. While the 5000DV did not perform as well as we expected, it did perform above average for an external drive. Using the USB 2.0 interface should improve the transfer rate by an estimated 70 Mb/sec. CPU utilization peeked 75% at times which worried us, but after comparing it to our LaCie Pocket Drive, we assumed this to be normal for a drive using the FireWire interface.  Please click on the performance tab above and below this review to see how the Maxtor 5000DV performed.

Conclusion

The 5000DV is perfect for those that need a lot of storage and would like a level of portability. For the HTPC user or those that simply want to store a large amount of movies and music, the 5000DV opens the door to unlimited possibilities.  The one touch backup works as promised and adds a nice touch to the already good performing drive. If an on/off switch was included and the drive put out less heat, Maxtor could possibly have an award winner in the 5000DV. We also would have liked to have seen a longer warranty but that seems to be how all hard drive manufacturers are heading. Overall the 5000DV is a solid performer and proved to be reliable with our use and abuse.  

*Editors Note 8/31/03: We lowered the overall score to a 7 because of the number of e-mails we received concerning the drives reliability. While we did not experience problems with it, please read the user reviews before making a purchasing decision.