Alternative to Maxtor PowerMax?

[Robbidoo]

I've got a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus10 that I suspect is dodgy.

At the moment it's running off the nVidia controller in my A8N-SLI Deluxe. The trouble is, Powermax won't detect drives on this controller. It also won't detect drives on the SI Raid controller.

So what can I use to try and diagnose it? I don't have any other SATA machines available.

I'm not worried about trying to get an RMA out of Maxtor - I know I could if I pushed them on it - I'd just really like to know if it's the disk or not before I go any further, as backing up the 200-odd GB of data isn't going to be trivial.

Any ideas gratefully received.

 

[Dahak]

are you using the latest version of power max?, its upto 4.21 now, there reason why i ask is because i had a drive that was not dected before to and had to update it (older 4.0something to 4.09)

 

[Robbidoo]

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with them whatsoever.

From the Maxtor website:

Note: PowerMax v 4.21 will not detect ATA or SATA hard disks connected to embedded or add in RAID controllers, NVIDIA Force 3, Force 4, VIA KT 600 and KT800 chipsets. If the hard disk is connected to an unsupported controller, it will have to be moved to an alternate system, or controller for diagnosis.

 

[thegorx]

yeah ... that's one of the reasons I'm not buying maxtor drives anymore
the last drive a was able to run the test on
had a SMART error from the motherboard and the quick test said that the full test would have to be run and the full test passed

But it was obviously the drive since it did this with every computer it was connected to

then when I tried to return it I couldn't use the online form because it had no error code then I had to call and and go thru the whole process of telling them the drive was bad and the test was wrong

 

[CQuinn]

You might try http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

or this page of other Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities
(including, but not limited to maxtor).