Maxtor Harddrive?

[philo]

i should have run a harddrive diagnostic *first* but i didn't.

anyway, i was working on an XP machine that would not boot up to the gui.
even attempting to boot to safe mode, the system hung about halfway
through .
from the recovery console i did a chkdsk /r and got the system working ok.

a few days later the person brought the machine back
because of the same problem...only this time chkdsk /r did not fix the
problem

because all the data was backed up
i decided to do a (slow) format and reinstall XP...
however the installation crashed partway through.
at that point i put in a different harddrive and all is well.
the machine has been running flawlessly for several days.

since the drive is a Maxtor...i ran the (maxtor)diagnostic utility
in order to get an RMA number.
when the diagnostic ran it said ( i forgot the *exact* words)
that the drive had a minor error...did i want to correct it?
so i opted for "yes"
i then got the message that the drive was now repaired...
and upon running the diagnostic again it came out ok.

from experience i know that just because a drive passes the diagnostic
it is not necessarily reliable...
of course with no errors showing there is prob. not much of a chance
of claiming warranty.

i'll probably just use the drive for a few months ( doing nothing
important)...just to see if it will actually work or not

my question is...does anyone know what Maxtor's diagnostic "fixed"
i know the diagnostics should be independent of the file system

 

[John]

my question is...does anyone know what Maxtor's diagnostic "fixed"
i know the diagnostics should be independent of the file system

Didnt it give you an error code? Or was it too minor to give you one?
I usually get one and then look it up on the net. They seem to be
cryptic - some description is listed for some of them but others ---
sometimes you see someone posting about it.

 

[FingAZ]

My brothers machine had the same problem, with a maxtor drive again- same
thing, repaired the drive with the diag utility and it worked fine for about
two weeks and right now its sitting around non-functional, with the same
problem, im guessing its a maxtor way of showing you a drive is on its way
out just for reference his drive is an IDE Maxtor 40GB, not sure of the
model number but theres not many different models which fit this description


FingAZ.

 

[philo]

Didnt it give you an error code? Or was it too minor to give you one?
I usually get one and then look it up on the net. They seem to be
cryptic - some description is listed for some of them but others ---
sometimes you see someone posting about it.

it did not give an error code
it just said it found a minor error which it could correct
(and did)
so it "seems" like the drive is not defective per se.

i was just curious as to what might have been "fixed"

but at any rate...will give the drive a good testing out
here
and may just use it for trying out new versions of linux etc

 

[philo]

My brothers machine had the same problem, with a maxtor drive again- same
thing, repaired the drive with the diag utility and it worked fine for about
two weeks and right now its sitting around non-functional, with the same
problem, im guessing its a maxtor way of showing you a drive is on its way
out just for reference his drive is an IDE Maxtor 40GB, not sure of the
model number but theres not many different models which fit this description


FingAZ.

thanks for the info
this drive is also an ide 40gig...
it's prob out of warranty anyway...so i guess i'll just use it for
experimenting

 

[FingAZ]

Yeah i recommend it- im guessing these hard drives were probably built at a
lower grade, hence the release of the diamond max 9 and 10, im not sure if
they are or not but it would make sense if these drives were diamond max 8?

FingAZ.

 

[kony]

My brothers machine had the same problem, with a maxtor drive again- same
thing, repaired the drive with the diag utility and it worked fine for about
two weeks and right now its sitting around non-functional, with the same
problem, im guessing its a maxtor way of showing you a drive is on its way
out just for reference his drive is an IDE Maxtor 40GB, not sure of the
model number but theres not many different models which fit this description

There are several different Maxtor 40GB models, perhaps more
than any other recent drive. For example there's the
Diamondmax 60, 540x, 740x, Plus 8, and maybe Plus 9 too.
I've had all but a Plus 9 in 40GB size and found ony the
Diamondmax 60 to be particularly problematic. Perhaps
Maxtor felt the same way as they replaced it with their
newly acquired Quantum model (D740x) before reverting back
to Maxtor designs for the Plus 8.

 

[Guest]

i ran the (maxtor)diagnostic utility in order to get an
RMA number. when the diagnostic ran it said ( i forgot
the *exact* words) that the drive had a minor error...
did i want to correct it? so i opted for "yes"
i then got the message that the drive was now repaired...
and upon running the diagnostic again it came out ok.

does anyone know what Maxtor's diagnostic "fixed"

It was probably able to read any bad sectors and rebuild their data
using the error correction bits. Then it rewrote the data to either
the same sectors or to some spares, taking the original sectors out of
use permanently if the latter were used.

The Maxtor diagnostic should be run a few more times over the next week
or 2 because the drive will probably soon fail completely if more
defects are found, but otherwise it should be fine for quite some time.

 

[philo]

There are several different Maxtor 40GB models, perhaps more
than any other recent drive. For example there's the
Diamondmax 60, 540x, 740x, Plus 8, and maybe Plus 9 too.
I've had all but a Plus 9 in 40GB size and found ony the
Diamondmax 60 to be particularly problematic. Perhaps
Maxtor felt the same way as they replaced it with their
newly acquired Quantum model (D740x) before reverting back
to Maxtor designs for the Plus 8.

i just had a look at the drive
it's D740x

 

[philo]

It was probably able to read any bad sectors and rebuild their data
using the error correction bits. Then it rewrote the data to either
the same sectors or to some spares, taking the original sectors out of
use permanently if the latter were used.

The Maxtor diagnostic should be run a few more times over the next week
or 2 because the drive will probably soon fail completely if more
defects are found, but otherwise it should be fine for quite some time.

yes
that makes sense.
i think i'll try lo-level formatting the drive and see what happens

although it does not always work...
i;ve had a few drives that were lo-level formatted and stayed working

 

[Guest]

time.

i think i'll try lo-level formatting the drive and see what happens

Don't bother with the LL format because all it will do is zero out the
sectors and replace any bad ones with spares, the latter something that
the read diagnostic does anyway. Some programs, such as Norton
Systemworks (Disk Doctor) and Spinrite, can test sectors by writing
several patterns to them, but they restore the original data so you
don't have to reinstall anything. However I don't know if they merely
mark off the bad sectors in the NTSF or FAT32 or use the drive's hidden
spare sectors.

 

[philo]

Don't bother with the LL format because all it will do is zero out the
sectors and replace any bad ones with spares, the latter something that
the read diagnostic does anyway. Some programs, such as Norton
Systemworks (Disk Doctor) and Spinrite, can test sectors by writing
several patterns to them, but they restore the original data so you
don't have to reinstall anything. However I don't know if they merely
mark off the bad sectors in the NTSF or FAT32 or use the drive's hidden
spare sectors.

well
i already did a lo-level format on it this morning
and installed an OS...and the drive is working fine now...
however i will just continue to use the drive for several more weeks or
months
and see what happens...
don't think i'll trust it for critical use though

 

[kony]

i just had a look at the drive
it's D740x

They seemed pretty solid to me, fast drives for their time
but loud whining sound, as bad as some of the WD
ball-bearing drives, sometimes better or worse.

 

[FingAZ]

OK a quick update, my brothers hard drive has completely failed- its gone
from a quick repair using powermax or whatever it is to "drive has started
to fail" and is now not recognisable in other machines as an NTFS drive-
serious issues, now having to get sum data recovery software great... not
lol- dont rely on errornous drives

FingAZ.

 

[kony]

OK a quick update, my brothers hard drive has completely failed- its gone
from a quick repair using powermax or whatever it is to "drive has started
to fail" and is now not recognisable in other machines as an NTFS drive-
serious issues, now having to get sum data recovery software great... not
lol- dont rely on errornous drives

FingAZ.

?

Data recovery software won't do a thing for you when a drive
isn't even detected by the system or other "drive-itself"
problems... recovery software is most useful from a logical
"mistake" scenario, where the drive works fine still.

 

[FingAZ]

OK sorry connection, got mixed up with the othewr IDE drive hooked up but
that drive had plently of problems regardless lol so basically to recover
the data from the damaged sectors (now non-repairable) i had to use data
recovery software- sorry bout the mixup

FingAZ