My "theory" is not just a theory. I know numerous people who have bought Maxtor drives within the past 3-4 months that when opened have been actual Maxtor drives and not re-badged Seagates. They identify themselves to the BIOS as such as well. Just because many people have gotten "lucky" and received re-badged Seagates doesn't mean that (a) the Maxtor business unit is no longer producing their own drives, and (b) regardless of that, there aren't warehouses full of Maxtor drives laying around to be shipped to customers who get (what I believe to be) unlucky at the game of Seagate-Maxtor Roulette. Also, it is a normal business practice to brand products differently based on the QA or QC results of individual units. So Seagate may in fact be allowing the lower quality Seagate drives to ship branded as Maxtors with a 3 year warranty whereas they hold the Seagate brand name to a higher standard. For a difference of typically under 5% in price my personal belief is that it is not worth sacrificing 2 additional years of warranty, especially since you might actually be receiving a lower quality product even if it is from the same fab plant.

And, I NEVER said anyone else had to subscribe to my logic or reasoning, I was merely providing what I believe to be a thoughtful response as opposed to the emotional bullcr@p that haunts these forums. Your post not included, as I actually find the healthy debate engaging and applaud you for standing out in the crowd of what is usually followers. We have different my mom's basement on this and that's fine. Those who don't have a viewpoint can read our posts and decide for themselves.