Failure to recognize new 160 GB SATA HD

[Vlad Katkov]

Hello, I recently bought a Maxtor 160 GB SATAII hard drive. It's been
a week since I got it and I was using it happily as a storage drive. I
have and use a 60 GB IDE drive as my master (paritioned into two parts,
C: and D on which I run Windows XP SP2.
Recently my computer just suddenly crashed. When I began to reboot it,
it took a full two minutes to get from the Windows Boot Shell menu to
the actual login screen. Once I do in fact login, I try to go to my
SATA drive (E but I get the error message:

E:\ is not accessible.
Incorrect function.

What confuses me even more is that I can see the drive in My Computer,
but it does not show up in the Disk Management section of the Computer
Management window (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Comp.
Management).
I just find it strange that the computer does not recognize the drive,
even though It's been there for a while now.
Also, whenever I unplug the SATA hd and boot, the boot up process is
very quick and I don't get any errors.
Has anyone encountered this before or has any information that can help
me? Very much appreciated.

 

[Chris G.]

Hello, I recently bought a Maxtor 160 GB SATAII hard drive. It's been
a week since I got it and I was using it happily as a storage drive. I
have and use a 60 GB IDE drive as my master (paritioned into two parts,
C: and D on which I run Windows XP SP2.
Recently my computer just suddenly crashed. When I began to reboot it,
it took a full two minutes to get from the Windows Boot Shell menu to
the actual login screen. Once I do in fact login, I try to go to my
SATA drive (E but I get the error message:

E:\ is not accessible.
Incorrect function.

What confuses me even more is that I can see the drive in My Computer,
but it does not show up in the Disk Management section of the Computer
Management window (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Comp.
Management).
I just find it strange that the computer does not recognize the drive,
even though It's been there for a while now.
Also, whenever I unplug the SATA hd and boot, the boot up process is
very quick and I don't get any errors.
Has anyone encountered this before or has any information that can help
me? Very much appreciated.

Sounds suspiciously like the drive has suffered a head-crash; a friend of
mine had the same problem just recently due to a power-failure while the
disk was being accessed. This doesn't happen *quite* so often nowadays, but
still..

Try to listen to the HD while you're booting from it; if there's a repeated
"ticking" sound then it's likely that you have - at best - some
bad/unreadable sectors, at worst a knackered HD :-/

You can try to format, but if it's a physical problem then there's not a lot
to do...

 

[Fitz]

Your drive should have come with "Maxblast 4", a bootable setup and
diagnostic CD. Load it, run the diagnostics. If the drive has failed, it
will give you an error code. Follow the onscreen instructions to obtain an
RMA and get a new drive. Maxtor will ship a new drive in advance if you want
and you can return your drive in the shipping container the new drive comes
in. Read the shipping instructions carefully, as failure to follow the
instructions will void the warranty. If you don't have the Maxblast CD, you
can download it from the Maxtor website, and can run it from CD or floppy.

Fitz