Maxtor Fires 900

Mathew Everett 5 Apr, 2006 at 1:24pm ET Article published in Tech

Drive maker Maxtor, which is about to be bought by its rival Seagate, has said that it will wipe 900 jobs from its operation in Singapore.

The California-based company said that it also expects to make a $104 million net loss this year.

Maxtor blames the lose on the fact that it had fewer sales and merger-related costs. Some component cost improvements, which were expected, didn’t happen either.

One of the advantages is that if no one buys your product you don’t have to hire so many people, so Maxtor said it significantly cut its production schedule and plans to eliminate 900 jobs at its Singapore manufacturing facility over the next several weeks.

Source: The Inquirer

Comments

9 Apr 2006 ~ 11:43am RattX Man, I hope they fired all those bastards who made crappy drives... ooops, thats the WHOLE COMPANY.

Thank you Seagate for "Taking out the Trash"

Our company has recommended and used primarily Seagate drives for the last 5 years. (and filled trashcans with bad Maxtor drives)

RattX
10 Apr 2006 ~ 12:28am Leonardo IBMs used to be the junk boys of the hard drive domain. Hitachi's acquisition of the IBM's drives business fixed that. Now Maxtor. I can only speak for myself, but in the last three years, out of my personally owned stable of Maxtors, Seagates, Hitachis, WDs, and a Samsung, the only failures have been Maxtors (yes - failures - plural). Just anecdotal information?
10 Apr 2006 ~ 2:01am Nosferatu I've owned Maxtor drives for a number of years, i'm using a 200GB now as my main drive and it runs 24/7 and has yet to show any signs of failure. All mine have worked great without any issues at all. I'm thinking I should buy a 250GB drive for backup though, not because it's a Maxtor necessarily, but just to be safe as it would suck beyond belief to have my main HD fail and take all my data with it. $100 now vs. 5-10x that in recovery costs in the future...
10 Apr 2006 ~ 2:06am Leonardo Anyone with data that they really would be upset of losing should have a backup drive, preferably in an external enclosure that can easily be disconnected from the power source. It's that simple.
10 Apr 2006 ~ 2:47am Nosferatu Since it's cheaper to buy an internal drive, what do you think about RAID 1? If one drive bites the bullet, the other copy would be unaffected, correct? Where is the information on the RAID setup stored? A copy on both drives? I'm using a power strip with surge protection and a high quality PSU (seasonic). I know either option is better than nothing, but would it really be worth the slower transfer speed and extra ~$80-90 for the external option vs. RAID 1?
10 Apr 2006 ~ 12:50pm RADA When I was working at Honeywell in Tucson, Dell came around doing a mass replacement of faulty HDs, all of them were 80 gig Maxtors....
10 Apr 2006 ~ 2:31pm Leonardo

in the last three years, out of my personally owned stable of Maxtors, Seagates, Hitachis, WDs, and a Samsung, the only failures have been Maxtors

Dell came around doing a mass replacement of faulty HDs, all of them were 80 gig Maxtors....

Funny you should say that. My failed Maxtors were both 80GB models.
10 Apr 2006 ~ 4:07pm Thrax I have an 80gb maxtor that's running on 7 years old. I also have 2x120gb Maxtors, 6 years old, that are still fine. My oldest HDD, a 20gb drive, is Maxtor and it's 10 years old.

Everyone has a different experience.
19 Apr 2006 ~ 12:57am slashark Ya I work for Dell via a contractor and about 50% of the drives I replace are maxtors. When I worked at a local shop it was about the same percentage with the rest being western digitals. Personally I stick to seagate and samsung.
19 Apr 2006 ~ 2:18am Leonardo

My oldest HDD, a 20gb drive, is Maxtor and it's 10 years old.

Thrax, if you say your Maxtors have longevity, I believe you without reservation. Are you sure you aren't exaggerating a little on the age of those drives. I remember upgrading to 3.5GB hard drive in early 1996. If I remember correctly, the largest drive availabe at that time was around 7 or 8GB, if even that.
19 Apr 2006 ~ 4:35am Thrax Maybe the size is over-stated, but the age isn't. The thing is built like a tank. Makes you believe in the "Don't make 'em like they used to" adage.