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Hard drive problems, unknown calamity

J

john513

Junior Member
I recently received a hard drive from a friend. It's a shiny (old) Maxtor, nothing particularly great, but a worthy gift.

Unfortunately, I'm having a little problem: Windows XP shits itself; FreeBSD gracefully panics; and Knoppix just plain doesn't work.

Windows XP works until a point. It recognizes the drive and allows me to read from and write to it. But seemingly random circumstances cause Windows to off itself completely, without any prior warning. This confuses me.

Knoppix offs itself without a hint. It doesn't even pass the boot process.

The jumpers are positioned correctly, no thanks to the vague diagram printed on the drive.

I have no idea what this type of behavior indicates. And because I don't have time to run tests due to upcoming work, I figured asking Anandtech would make sense.
 
First thing you should have done is what Kensai suggested. Download Maxtor's diagnostic and run the full (Advanced) diagnostic which will take a few hours.

Other possibilities: bad ribbon cable, or dirty ribbon contacts (unplug and reseat the ribbon on BOTH ends to clean the contacts off).

 
When I removed the Maxtor from case, the ribbon cable stayed behind with a new CDRW and my Seagate drive. These components are working flawlessly. I don't think this is the problem.

Running PowerMax diagnostic (UBCD)...
 
My computer is starting to exhibit similar symptoms without the Maxtor drive. I think it may be the ribbon cable.
 
It may be nothing to do with the drive -

Keep your mind open to all possibilities.

Have you done a MEMTEST recently?
 
I ran some diagnostics while I was at work. All tests passed.

Something like this always seems to happen when I touch hardware. I am the grim reaper of electronics. It might suit me better to stay strictly in the realm of software.

Everything is back in the same order as it previously worked. Hopefully this will solve my problems.
 
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