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HD troubles

CareBear

NLC
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More specifically: issues with a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160Gb 8Mb cache model.

The drive is barely a week old and I'm having trouble with the BIOS not recognizing it once every 4-5 reboots. It'll work fine 90% of the time and then suddenly decide to drop down to floppy disk like read/write speeds; WinXP is reporting IDE channel timeouts and errors during paging operations every few minutes.

I'm leaning towards considering this a faulty drive: the one before was a DiamondMax Plus 9 80Gb; also UIDE133, connected on the same IDE cable, same motherboard, same OS. Only difference in the system is the new HD.

If anyone has any thoughts on how to decide one way or the other I'm very willing to try. It took 4 weeks to get this drive delivered; the option of returning it, reinstalling everything on the old drive, waiting for the replacement, then reinstalling everything yet again on that one isn't a pleasant prospect. :(
 
I'd say buy the same one from a local store and use it.
if it works, pack your faulty in the new one's box and return to store saying it dosnt work.

not a very christian way to fix it, but it'll work :)


did you try running some disk checking utility?
maybe half of the drive has bad sectors?
 
Wojtek said:
I'd say buy the same one from a local store and use it.
if it works, pack your faulty in the new one's box and return to store saying it dosnt work.

not a very christian way to fix it, but it'll work :)


did you try running some disk checking utility?
maybe half of the drive has bad sectors?

i agree :D
 
try running Maxtor's diagnostic tool. if it can detect an error and provide an error code, you have a good reason to return it or you can get an RMA code to get a new one.
 
Code:
		MAXTOR POWERMAX LOG FILE
		-------------------------
 Maxtor PowerMax 4.09
 Date Tested: 08/22/2004
 Model Number: Maxtor 6Y160P0                          
 FirmWareRev: YAR41BW0
 Cylinders per Drive: 317632
 Heads per Cylinder: 16
 Max LBA: 320173056
 SPT: 63
 FE:    000
 Quick Test Result: Advanced Test Required

		MAXTOR POWERMAX LOG FILE
		-------------------------
 Maxtor PowerMax 4.09
 Date Tested: 08/22/2004
 Model Number: Maxtor 6Y160P0                          
 FirmWareRev: YAR41BW0
 Cylinders per Drive: 317632
 Heads per Cylinder: 16
 Max LBA: 320173056
 SPT: 63
 FE:    S57
 Advanced Test Result: FAILED
I was pleased Maxtor's own test showed the drive to be defective, until I ran the exact same test this morning and it came back with "Congratulations! Your drive is in perfect working order." :confused4
I am one unhappy bear right now. Things that are broken should remain broken and there is no way I'm going to ever trust that drive with any data again. :mad2:

Since it's barely a week old and yesterday's test did give me a Maxtor diagnostic code I'll have a go at making a stand that I'm not leaving the store without a new replacement.
 
Wojtek said:
I'd say buy the same one from a local store and use it.
if it works, pack your faulty in the new one's box and return to store saying it dosnt work.

not a very christian way to fix it, but it'll work :)
I did buy it at a retail store, they just carry zero stock and everything has to be ordered. Their supplier took 4 weeks to deliver the drive to them.

As far as your suggestion goes, I'd very much advise against ever trying that. The purchase order has the drive's serial number on it; you'd have some explaining to do trying to bring in another drive. :)

try running Maxtor's diagnostic tool. if it can detect an error and provide an error code, you have a good reason to return it or you can get an RMA code to get a new one.
See my previous post. I am however going to pretend that I never saw that "perfect working order" result and just print out the failed test with the diagnostic code.
Since it's barely a week old and I had to wait such a long time to get it in the first place I think I have some leeway to pull off the angry, dissatisfied customer routine :p.
 
Last edited:
CareBear said:
As far as your suggestion goes, I'd very much advise against ever trying that. The purchase order has the drive's serial number on it; you'd have some explaining to do trying to bring in another drive. :)
Oh well, It sounded good in theory, heh

Good luck in the store to get replacement :)
 
Update: I went to the store and after struggling with the newbie store clerk (who insisted that they don't exchange items that have been opened and used) they placed an order for a new HD which should arrive before the end of the week. :)
 
I have the exact same hard drive and I have been hearing bad things about Maxtor. Next time, I better get myself a Seagate or something. :(
 
Ashed said:
I have the exact same hard drive and I have been hearing bad things about Maxtor. Next time, I better get myself a Seagate or something. :(
They're not bad, I'm sure Seagate has their batch of faulty ones as well. Just bad luck that I happened to get one.

That said, I will go with a Seagate next time as well. I have several drives by both and the Seagates are whisperquiet, the electronics isn't exposed like it is with Maxtor and the speed of Seagate drives tends to be constant across the entire drive and not slower the nearer it gets towards the end.
 
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