Time to contact Maxtor for two RMAs.

If you're going to buy a new drive, look at Seagate, WD, Samsung or Hitachi.

Run the Dell diagnostics on the drive to verify, or use Powermax, but it sure sounds like it.

Maxtor's track record of late is poor - they have had a lot of quality control issues with their drives in the past year or two.

i bought both drives off ebay new in anti static wrapper with seal on sent first one back sent me another right away first thing i get after window screen is disk read error and before that a keyboard error old hard drive does more than these

so if i put new drive in and get disk read error then the drive is bad?

Sounds like someone on EBay bought a consignment of faulty Maxtor drives.

Return the drive(s) and buy a Seagate, WD, Samsung or Hitachi to replace them.