H
Hans-Georg Michna
I have two Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300S0 SATA disks, one as the
main internal disk and one external, and two more in the house,
all connected to A8N-SLI Premium motherboards (with nForce 4
chip set). They all seem to have an insidious problem, and I'd
like to know whether anybody here knows more about this.
The most prevalent symptom is that they sporadically hang while
booting. But, even more infrequently, they appear to cause
trouble at any later time as well. The essential symptom is that
the disk suddenly stops delivering any data, and the computer
hangs. Processes that don't need disk data still work to some
extent, like moving the mouse pointer, but as soon as the disk
is required, everything comes to a halt.
To stress the disks, I use Raxco's Perfect Disk 6 to defragment
them. Lots of data is moved around on the disk, so errors would
show up.
Since yesterday, every attempt to defragment my main disk ended
after a few minutes with a hang of the system. Quite obviously
the cause is that the disk stops delivering data. True to form,
neither the disk itself, nor the driver, nor the application,
nor the operating system (Windows XP SP2) times out. Everything
waits eternally. I end up having to press the reset key on the
computer.
I tracked down the location and found that, when I tried to read
a particular file, the system would hang. I finally deleted that
file and the problem went away. However, the disk now shows
(through Everest) that one sector has been relocated. That's not
a good sign at all for a brand new hard disk, but if it remained
the only one, it would be acceptable.
I suspect though that this is a secondary error that may have
been caused by the disk suddenly hanging during a write
operation. The hard disk firmware revision is BANC1G10 on both
of my hard disks, and I have two more in the house that also
seem to cause problems, usually by hanging during booting. Could
anybody please tell me whether this is the latest revision for
the Maxtor 6L300S0?
I ran my disks for some time on the IDE drivers included in
Windows, but at least the hangs on the problem file occurred
there as well, so I went back to the nVidia nForce 4 drivers.
Yet one more problem. Everest reports that my main internal SATA
disk runs at UDMA 6 / ATA-133 and supports the features Security
Mode and Host Protected Area, while the other one, external
SATA, runs at UDMA 5 /ATA-100 and does not support these two
features. Any ideas, anyone, what that could mean?
Hans-Georg
main internal disk and one external, and two more in the house,
all connected to A8N-SLI Premium motherboards (with nForce 4
chip set). They all seem to have an insidious problem, and I'd
like to know whether anybody here knows more about this.
The most prevalent symptom is that they sporadically hang while
booting. But, even more infrequently, they appear to cause
trouble at any later time as well. The essential symptom is that
the disk suddenly stops delivering any data, and the computer
hangs. Processes that don't need disk data still work to some
extent, like moving the mouse pointer, but as soon as the disk
is required, everything comes to a halt.
To stress the disks, I use Raxco's Perfect Disk 6 to defragment
them. Lots of data is moved around on the disk, so errors would
show up.
Since yesterday, every attempt to defragment my main disk ended
after a few minutes with a hang of the system. Quite obviously
the cause is that the disk stops delivering data. True to form,
neither the disk itself, nor the driver, nor the application,
nor the operating system (Windows XP SP2) times out. Everything
waits eternally. I end up having to press the reset key on the
computer.
I tracked down the location and found that, when I tried to read
a particular file, the system would hang. I finally deleted that
file and the problem went away. However, the disk now shows
(through Everest) that one sector has been relocated. That's not
a good sign at all for a brand new hard disk, but if it remained
the only one, it would be acceptable.
I suspect though that this is a secondary error that may have
been caused by the disk suddenly hanging during a write
operation. The hard disk firmware revision is BANC1G10 on both
of my hard disks, and I have two more in the house that also
seem to cause problems, usually by hanging during booting. Could
anybody please tell me whether this is the latest revision for
the Maxtor 6L300S0?
I ran my disks for some time on the IDE drivers included in
Windows, but at least the hangs on the problem file occurred
there as well, so I went back to the nVidia nForce 4 drivers.
Yet one more problem. Everest reports that my main internal SATA
disk runs at UDMA 6 / ATA-133 and supports the features Security
Mode and Host Protected Area, while the other one, external
SATA, runs at UDMA 5 /ATA-100 and does not support these two
features. Any ideas, anyone, what that could mean?
Hans-Georg