Maxtor SATA disk on nForce 4 (for example, A8N-SLI Premium)

  • Thread starter Hans-Georg Michna
  • Start date
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
 
P

Paul

Hans-Georg Michna said:
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.

You are not alone, having trouble with Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300S0 :

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.c..._frm/thread/8534058674d754f8/c0f47ff5c0c77301

Perhaps you can look at the disks with the Hitachi "Feature Tool" ?
And see what features are turned on.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm (scroll down a bit)

Paul
 
L

Leif Nordmand Andersen

Hi Hans,

I have two Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300S0 SATA disks, one as the

I'm sorry to have to write this.

2 months of constant breakdowns with Maxtor SATA disks, mine were
DiamondMax 9. Same symptoms like yours, stop responding, write errors
.... many other symtoms too.

I have now replaced them with 6 Seagade 250 GB and 1 Samsung 250 GB
disks - my system is still running of an IDE Maxtor DiamondMax 9 160
GB disk, no problems.

I have actually tried another new DiamondMax 9 in the setup, just
recently .... and this one new disk in the system and all the faults
came back. I've removed it, and since no problems.

Sorry ... Spare yourself of months of dispair, sell the Maxtor's count
your looses, and get something else. Your time is valuable too.

Regards Leif.
 
H

Hans-Georg Michna

Paul, Leif,

thanks for your good information! I'll try to find out more.
Currently the disks work, although they sometimes boot slowly.

By the way, they have a newer firmware, named BANC1G10.

Hans-Georg
 
L

Leif Nordmand Andersen

Hi Hans-Georg,

thanks for your good information! I'll try to find out more.
Currently the disks work, although they sometimes boot slowly.

By the way, they have a newer firmware, named BANC1G10.

I've had a drive with that firmware too. I had one disk changed 5
times, in that way Maxtor were really good. Unfortunately it cased the
same problem here.

At one point I really thought it was the onboard SATA controllers, and
I went ahead and got 2 Promise SATA150II 4 port controllers. They are
slower (being on the PCI bus), and maybe therefor sligthly more
stable. But eventually the freeze would come!!

Changing all the Maxtor Drives has made my system the most solid
system I've EVER had.

Regards Leif.
 
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I too have the boot hang problem, on two seperate motherboard/cpu combinations (with the same hard drive though). I've never had the hang occur after booting though, so I think that might just be a seperate failure.

I've had the boot hang on a MSI K8N Neo2 nForce3 board, and currently on a MSI K8N Neo4 nForce4-SLI board. My hard drive is a 6B300S0 and if I'm reading this right the firmware is BANC1980.

Let us know if you have any luck fixing this problem, at least now I know its not unique to my drive.
 
M

matthias.zoss

I have the same problem. I can install Windows on a A8N-SLI Premium on
any Harddisk and it works fine. As soon as I install on a brand new
Maxtor Maxline III (Model 7L300S0) with Firmware Code: BANC1G10 I get
those freezes while booting Windows.

I installed Windows 8 times from Scratch on that disk and as soon as I
install nForce Drivers or any other HD relevant software (Nero,
Acronis) it will never boot again.
 
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workaround

6V300F0 SATA2 (only) maxtor drive on a ECS KN1 Ultra with nForce4 chipset.
workaround for the maxtor-nForce4 issue:
Before getting to the Login-screen my computer discontinues booting.
By trial and error I found out, that when I remove the SATA plug the bootprocess continues and I can plug it back in (hot-swap) once I have reached the desktop.
I'd say this is a driver problem not firmware.
The Drive worked fine with my Promise TX2+ SATA2 controller
 

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