Maxtor 40 Gig HD generates read errors, but Powermax says its ok

[jetstar88]

I have a 40 Gig Maxtor drive that is about a year old on a 3 year
warranty (yes I'm sure) and it is clearly causing problems in my 3
drive system. It can be written to, though seems slower than the other
2 drives, and applications run from it, but when copying partitions
FROM that disk, I get read errors. Am using Partition Magic 7, and
have both Win98 and WinXP and the problem is the same in both.

Did a lot of testing to determine which of the 3 disks was true
culprit and its the 40 gig (other two are an 80 gig Western Digital
and 120 gig Maxtor) for sure. But Maxtor's Powermax program that you
have to run to get an error code sees nothing wrong with the
drive----even though it takes FOREVER to complete its tests. The drive
is passing their tests, and it was fine until a couple of weeks ago,
but is messed up now.

When I called Maxtor I got the technician from hell who put down
Powerquest;s Partition Magic and me and claimed it had to be software
as the culprit and would not issue an RMA.

I'm not looking for a bigger drive or anything like that. I just want
the drive to work under all the conditions it did until 2 weeks ago.

At this point, I'm tempted to go out and buy another drive from
another maker (Western Digital or Seagate) and will NEVER buy another
Maxtor if they don't do right by me on this one.

This isn;t the first drive from them that I have bought, but it will
be the last unless someone out there can shed some light on some way
to get them to give me the benefit of the doubt. Conversely, if I have
overlooked some cause that would not be the drive's fault, I would
much prefer to solve things that way. But the other Hard Drives are
able to do everything in terms of reading and writing to each other
and writing to this one.

Also.... even when transfering large files in Windows I am getting
goofy warnings after they fail. Like the "path is too deep". There
wasn't even a path. The file was an individual image file. While it
represents several paths, to Windows, its one file in the root
directory of a drive with tons of space going to one with tons of
space (667MB file from a drive with 1300MB of free space to another
with the same.

Any advice (or shared horror stories) appreciated.

Thanks,
Larry

 

[Barry OGrady]

I have a 40 Gig Maxtor drive that is about a year old on a 3 year
warranty (yes I'm sure) and it is clearly causing problems in my 3
drive system. It can be written to, though seems slower than the other
2 drives, and applications run from it, but when copying partitions
FROM that disk, I get read errors. Am using Partition Magic 7, and
have both Win98 and WinXP and the problem is the same in both.

Did a lot of testing to determine which of the 3 disks was true
culprit and its the 40 gig (other two are an 80 gig Western Digital
and 120 gig Maxtor) for sure. But Maxtor's Powermax program that you
have to run to get an error code sees nothing wrong with the
drive----even though it takes FOREVER to complete its tests. The drive
is passing their tests, and it was fine until a couple of weeks ago,
but is messed up now.

When I called Maxtor I got the technician from hell who put down
Powerquest;s Partition Magic and me and claimed it had to be software
as the culprit and would not issue an RMA.

I'm not looking for a bigger drive or anything like that. I just want
the drive to work under all the conditions it did until 2 weeks ago.

At this point, I'm tempted to go out and buy another drive from
another maker (Western Digital or Seagate) and will NEVER buy another
Maxtor if they don't do right by me on this one.

This isn;t the first drive from them that I have bought, but it will
be the last unless someone out there can shed some light on some way
to get them to give me the benefit of the doubt. Conversely, if I have
overlooked some cause that would not be the drive's fault, I would
much prefer to solve things that way. But the other Hard Drives are
able to do everything in terms of reading and writing to each other
and writing to this one.

Also.... even when transfering large files in Windows I am getting
goofy warnings after they fail. Like the "path is too deep". There
wasn't even a path. The file was an individual image file. While it
represents several paths, to Windows, its one file in the root
directory of a drive with tons of space going to one with tons of
space (667MB file from a drive with 1300MB of free space to another
with the same.

Any advice (or shared horror stories) appreciated.

I would run scandisk surface check. Spinrite was unable to fault a drive
but scandisk surface check was.

Thanks,
Larry

-Barry
========
Web page: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~barry.og
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Voicemail/fax number +14136227640

 

[Chris Hill]

I have a 40 Gig Maxtor drive that is about a year old on a 3 year
warranty (yes I'm sure) and it is clearly causing problems in my 3
drive system. It can be written to, though seems slower than the other
2 drives, and applications run from it, but when copying partitions
FROM that disk, I get read errors. Am using Partition Magic 7, and
have both Win98 and WinXP and the problem is the same in both.

Did a lot of testing to determine which of the 3 disks was true
culprit and its the 40 gig (other two are an 80 gig Western Digital
and 120 gig Maxtor) for sure. But Maxtor's Powermax program that you
have to run to get an error code sees nothing wrong with the
drive----even though it takes FOREVER to complete its tests. The drive
is passing their tests, and it was fine until a couple of weeks ago,
but is messed up now.

When I called Maxtor I got the technician from hell who put down
Powerquest;s Partition Magic and me and claimed it had to be software
as the culprit and would not issue an RMA.

I'm not looking for a bigger drive or anything like that. I just want
the drive to work under all the conditions it did until 2 weeks ago.

I'd get a vom and check the 12 and 5v lines on the power supply, maybe
it is going bad and the maxtor is more delicate than all the others.
Considering what a 40gb is worth anymore, trashing it might be the
simplest solution.

 

[Chris Hill]

"Vom"? Voltage Output Meter maybe??? Not sure I want to find
something wrong there, but I hear you and agree something like a small
voltage drop could possibly affect it. Still.... its only within the
last 3-4 weeks that the errors and slowness started.

Power supplies don't puke on a schedule. Check your 5v and 12v lines,
make sure they are fairly close, 5v is pretty critical, if it drops
under 4.75 you need a real supply. I'd replace a supply if the 12v
was under 11.5 as well.