Problems with 60Gb Maxtor DiamondMax +9

[Karlos]

Hi all,

My poor mate Andy has really won the jackpot in the sh!t sweepstakes this alst few days.

Some odd electrical surge fried his whole PC, which he's had had to buy all new parts for.

Anyway, to cut a long (and sad) story short, its sat here and a brand new HD refuses to format properly.

It's a 60GB Maxtor DiamondMax +9, ATA133 7200RPM. It formats then refuses to write the partition table :-(

I've checked the cables, BIOS settings and just about everything else obvious, but can't find any faults. The motherboard and hard drive are the same models as he owned previously (Asus A7V8X-X motherboard).

Other than the chance the drive is duff, any other possibilities?

Cheers,

K

[seer]

Matrox has a reasonable support site, try looking through these (Hope the link works.. Sorry, I'm not in the mood to search any further..)

[lempkee]

my 160gb ibm hdd died after 14 months (died last week) , every file on it became corrupted (crc error) ...

i tried to reformat and i tried with diff file systems with no luck...

i dont thrust new HARDWARE... to hell with it all...

[seer]

my 160gb ibm hdd died after 14 months (died last week) , every file on it became corrupted (crc error) ...

These days, HD's seem to be made as "throw away devices"... Tho most IBM drives (Use them at work for most PCs) I know seem to last for years, Maxtor drives seem to last about 1.5 years..

to hell with it all...

Burn them all !!! Damn the women !!

[The_Editor]

With 5 hard drives in my Comp Do NLE ( MASSIVE filesizes) I'm Sooooooo tempted to mouth off...

Best not to tempt providence though   :-o


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[seer]

With 5 hard drives in my Comp Do NLE ( MASSIVE filesizes) I'm Sooooooo tempted to mouth off...

Hmm.. Only have 4... But; backup backup backup !!  ;-)  :-x

[that_punk_guy]

Yet another dodgy DiamondMax drive! It's no wonder they have a great support site, god knows they need it!

Mine died in December, Im>bE's died too, a couple of months back. If I were Andy, I'd see about getting back to the supplier and returning it ASAP, hopefully he can get a better made drive instead. EBuyer won't exchange mine for a different brand because I had it longer than 30 days, and I can't get a warranty replacement because Maxtor's software says it's fine...  :-x

[GadgetMaster]

@Karlos

Some advice for your friend:

If its brand new and it refuses to format in any PC then take it straight back for a replacement. If a fault ocurs in the first few days the shop should take it back. It shouldn't take the retailer too long to test that it is indeed faulty.

This way the onus is on the sipplier to get the RMA sorted with the manufacturer. (Well actually it is usualy passed to another middleman distributor before it get to the Mfr. )

If it has been longer they might tell you to get it replaced directly from the manufacturer at your own shipping costs.

If it was bought mail order you need to get an RMA from the supplier first and it could take longer.

Anyway, good luck. I hope you get it sorted without too much trouble.

[Waccoon]

I've RMA'd quite a few Maxtor drives.  I don't trust them at all.  The fact they give you refurbs as replacements is even worse (but then, all computer companies do that).

PowerMax is what you want, if you haven't got it already.  It has always given me a proper error code with any Maxtor drive that's gone flakey on me.

BTW, did you check the cable, or use a different one?  I had a cable that worked fine on one HD but not on another.  I am so glad that SATA is finally here!  If only more optical drives used it...

[Karlos]

GadgetMaster wrote:

If its brand new and it refuses to format in any PC then take it straight back for a replacement. If a fault ocurs in the first few days the shop should take it back. It shouldn't take the retailer too long to test that it is indeed faulty.

Well, its definately duff. Poor feller has set off home empty handed leaving his PC here for me to sort out. He has to work tomorrow and we didnt have time to return the drive today.

This way the onus is on the sipplier to get the RMA sorted with the manufacturer. (Well actually it is usualy passed to another middleman distributor before it get to the Mfr. )

Fortunately the returns dept. of the shop we got it from is rather friendly so I don't anticipate a problem with return. The plan is to get a credit note and replace with a different drive tomorrow.

What do people reckon to Western Digital? Theres a 40G drive that has 8Mb cache but only manages ATA100 that Andy liked the look of as a replacement here.

Anyway, good luck. I hope you get it sorted without too much trouble.

Cheers. I bought a new case today to install another PC motherboard I have lying around so there are now 5 tower systems (and a pair of 1200D's) kicking around! It's getting really silly :-)

[duesi]

Matrox has a reasonable support site,

Matrox are Graphic cards :-)
and Maxtor are the worst drives on the market.
(I ignore this brand)
I work as a PC-Technician, you can guess which drives fail mostly :-x
I recommend WD or IBM
 

[Karlos]

IBM, eh? There were some Deskstars. Any good in your opinion?

-edit-

Theres an old 10G maxtor in my A1200T :nervous:

[GadgetMaster]

Theres an old 10G maxtor in my A1200T :nervous:

Its funny how many Maxtors we sell where I work but we have hardly had any returns in the last year.

Anyway, if he has a SATA capable mainboard he can get the 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptor. High speed but high price aswell and low capacity (36GB ?) . Comes with a 5 year warranty. It is supposed to be reliable.

[patrik]

@Karlos:

Try putting the disk in your Amiga and then make one big partition of it and format it (no quick format).

This may sounds wierd, but it has saved me on some occasions when PCs have been unable to for example write the partition-table to the disk.

Good luck!


/Patrik

[Bodie]

Karlos wrote:
IBM, eh? There were some Deskstars. Any good in your opinion?

-edit-

Theres an old 10G maxtor in my A1200T :nervous:

Steer well clear of the Deathstar ;-)  harddrives. Take a peek at this 1000+ thread on these drives:
http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/2799/

I had one in my A1, I replaced it with a Seagate after hearing the click click click sound described in the above link :nervous: .