is my HDD toast?

[nortexoid]

it worked perfectly until last night when i tried to update my via ide busmaster drivers
to the leaked 4.26...i'm now running the 4.25a from via's site - here's the prob:

i repartition/format the drive and there's no errors - until i copy data to it...then,
BAM! - screwed up FAT, etc. (blue screen telling me it can't write to d

I had it set up as secondary master and slave - same problem...i even low-leveled formatted it using the maxtor LL format utility - no errors...no errors when i dos format it either...i can scandisk it - nothing wrong...complete surface scan even...
but if i go to write data to it - it's screwed - and i think it only screws up in windows (98se)...but not dos. - anyone have any idea what the hell is wrong w/ it????

thanks

Asus K7M (amd 751 north, via south)
mx300 sound
v6600 geforce
win98se

 

[nortexoid]

is it???!!!! IS IT!!!!!

it saddens me....oh so deeply.

 

[obenton]

I'd straighten out the VIA driver issue, run the drive mfg's drive integrity utility, and then reformat and reinstall. No telling what's corrupted in there, now.

 

[nortexoid]

i'm sure it's these drivers, since the drive functinos flawlessly w/ DMA disabled.
I lose performance on it, but since it is my mp3 drive, it's not a big deal...
oddly, it didn't affect the DVD w/ DMA enabled (as either master or slave)...

first time i've ever encoutnered such a problem, and it seems, i can't solve it.
i reverted to using my old drivers, same problem...no idea.

any idea which is better? the miniport driver or the VSD (i think it's vsd??)..it gives those two
options for installing via busmaster drivers...i chose both, but noticed lesser performance w/ the VSD and DMA enabled...

what about the windows bundled drivers?

 

[Usul]

What about using the old version?

 

[nortexoid]

tried the old ones - same crap....

thinking that i have to complete and utterly uninstall the previous ones..
i uninstall it using the uninstall - but apparently that's not good enough..
it must either not uninstall them at all, or leaves them partially in use...
like in the registry, etc...

first i thought my damn hdd was scrap....apparently not...didn't think drivers could
make such a difference...rendering my hdd completely useless w/ dma enabled...odd.