I own two such drives. Both failed in less then two years, one completely, the second one still works if mounted "upside down" (otherwise the motor cannot start). I think there are some motor reliability problem with this particular drive and it is more common that one can assume from the posts or WEB research (search Google for "Maxtor Double Beep Problem").I also own 4 I Western Digital drives with 8MB cache and they all are still alive. Again this might be a coincidence , but please be careful before buying this drive, especially as a replacement.