MAXTOR can go to hell !!!! UPDATED

[Mildlyamused]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
Hello, AT users...

I just had another Maxtor drive quit on me. From now on, I'm going to avoid these pieces of crap like the plague. No more Maxtor in this house. It just hurts that I've lost so much time and money with them. At the beginning of April, an 80 GB just went to hell, and started clicking, and is no longer readable in any way. The sad part is that it was a replacement of a replacement of a replacement!

And today, another one crashed...

I mean, seriously! I bought this last drive - 160 GB - at a Christmas sale at Staples, last year - less than 6 months ago. It was connected through my on-board Promise controller on the Abit NSF7... and today, it just disappeared under Windows. After a reboot, Windows reported errors on the drive, and now I'm backing up about 115 GB out of the 130 gig of data which I had on the drive, because that's all that Ontrack Easy Recovery was able to find.

Maxtor can go to hell!

UPDATE:

The above was written on May 5th... today, May 30th, the 160 GB replacement I was sent by Maxtor ceased functioning. By the way, I asked for a DiamondMax Plus 10, instead of the 9 series.

The first installation went OK, I started using the HD immediately, and off-loaded about 45 GB on it, from my video capture drive, basically some audio and video content in several formats.

I launched Diskeeper, to defragment the older drives, and it analyzed all the HDs in the system, then did its work.

Last Saturday, I realised two things have happened: some audio files are corrupted and cannot be accessed or deleted, AND Diskeeper gives me an error message when trying to analyze the new HD. Ontrack Easy Recovery, launched in order to retrieve the remaining files, inexplicably quits to desktop every time the Disk Recovery is started, and shows me the drive has 128 GB of total space. I look at "My Computer", where Windows Explorer indicates the drive to be 156 GB...

I re-formatted the HD, and started using it again, this time I already fear it's defective, so I try to load some 100 GB via USB from two external HDs - again, audio and video files only.

Suddenly, several files give me an error message, and at first I believe it's from the external HDs, but about 30 minutes later I realized the problem is when I try to access files on the Maxtor...

By this time I know what's the next mmove: I reboot the computer, and when Windows returns, it informs me the HD needs to be formatted. I stop, put a diskette with PowerMax in the floppy, and the damn tests run perfectly... the HD passes all the tests.

Whe I reboot into Windows again, after Powermax has run its own reformatting, both the Windows Disk Management tool *and* EasyRecovery indicate the drive is 128 GB in size.

I can't wait to call Maxtor tomorrow...

Have you heard of the word overheating??!?!?! You know, when you do large file transfers from one drive to another, you need to stop and let the drive cool down about every 20GB transferred unless you have an HDD cooler. It's bad enough you transferred 45GB with out cooling but then to top it off with defragging really asked for it. The only time I've ever had a maxtor drive die is when I killed it my self (incorrectly hooked up FDD power cable). All drives get hot when doing huge file transfers. I have seagates which are great drives and when I did huge file transfers with out letting them cool down, I started to get corrupted files as well. Let em cool down and then countinue...

 

[Mildlyamused]

Originally posted by: tk109
Overclocking and virus can ruin a drive too.

I had a few brand new drives get ruined by virus's at my moms company. Couldn't even do a low level format on them anymore.

And Overclocking can at least really mess up the data. But should be able to format I'd imagine.

Maybe you have a heat or vibration problem too.

The odds are to much against it being the drive and more likely you or your system or the environment it's in.

FIXMBR? FIXBOOT? FDISK?

 

[Chaotic42]

I've had five of them die on me, and I suspect that the reason was heat. I also just had an 80GB WD die on me two weeks ago.

I replaced it with a somewhat slow Seagate.

 

[Megatomic]

Your experiences with Maxtor drives is odd to me. There is a 4 year old Maxtor 40GB running strong in my wife's computer and both of the drives in my computer are at least 2 years old. SMART reports no problems with them, either.

I'm sorry to hear about your problems though. 🙁

 

[Mildlyamused]

I hear about people complaining about the reliabilty of maxtors and yet I have an 80GB maxtor from later 1999/early 2000 that still running strong though I don't put much stress on it like load a lot of game levels...

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Good point with the cooling, mildlyamused, but what the heck am I to do with an 160 GB reported as 128? That can't be just overheating, can it?

 

[helpme]

My brother has had 3 or 4 maxtors fail on him so far (same drive replaced that many times).

 

[imported_Phil]

The problem you are describing with the drive is symptomatic of problems with Windows, your BIOS, and 24-bit addressing. Without the 48-bit addressing introduced with 2000 Service Pack 3 and XP Service Pack 1, the drive will report as a maximum of 128Gb.

Check your BIOS, controller card BIOS and Service Packs.

Also, make sure, like others have suggested, that you change that IDE cable.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Mildlyamused

Have you heard of the word overheating??!?!?! You know, when you do large file transfers from one drive to another, you need to stop and let the drive cool down about every 20GB transferred unless you have an HDD cooler. It's bad enough you transferred 45GB with out cooling but then to top it off with defragging really asked for it. The only time I've ever had a maxtor drive die is when I killed it my self (incorrectly hooked up FDD power cable). All drives get hot when doing huge file transfers. I have seagates which are great drives and when I did huge file transfers with out letting them cool down, I started to get corrupted files as well. Let em cool down and then countinue...

Oh, shut up and stop spreading absolute bullsh!t nonsense. That's the most ridiculous advice I've ever seen.

stop and let the drive cool down about every 20GB transferred unless you have an HDD cooler

:roll:

 

[Mildlyamused]

Originally posted by: Phil
The problem you are describing with the drive is symptomatic of problems with Windows, your BIOS, and 24-bit addressing. Without the 48-bit addressing introduced with 2000 Service Pack 3 and XP Service Pack 1, the drive will report as a maximum of 128Gb.

Check your BIOS, controller card BIOS and Service Packs.

Also, make sure, like others have suggested, that you change that IDE cable.

:thumbsup:

 

[Megatomic]

I work the hell out of my drives (gaming/video capture) and they are fine. The case is moderately cooled but the drives have no cooling solutions applied to them at all. Heat has never been an issue for my Maxtors.

 

[Mildlyamused]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: Mildlyamused

Have you heard of the word overheating??!?!?! You know, when you do large file transfers from one drive to another, you need to stop and let the drive cool down about every 20GB transferred unless you have an HDD cooler. It's bad enough you transferred 45GB with out cooling but then to top it off with defragging really asked for it. The only time I've ever had a maxtor drive die is when I killed it my self (incorrectly hooked up FDD power cable). All drives get hot when doing huge file transfers. I have seagates which are great drives and when I did huge file transfers with out letting them cool down, I started to get corrupted files as well. Let em cool down and then countinue...

Oh, shut up and stop spreading absolute bullsh!t nonsense. That's the most ridiculous advice I've ever seen.

stop and let the drive cool down about every 20GB transferred unless you have an HDD cooler

:roll:

Hey this is simply my experience, when I had to do large file transfers for my sister and her friend who had well over 250GB worth of files, I had to do what I mentioned above. When ever I transfered more than about 20GB at a time the drive would overheat and crash and these were seagates! When the drives crashed, it would also crash the computer therefore forcing me to restart and when I checked what I copied over, most of it was corrupt. Drives do overheat, it's not a myth so doing this will ensure that you don't overheat your drive. Another way to make sure you don't overheat your drive is to install MBM5, enable the HDD sensor and try to make sure the temps don't go over like 50*c, 55*C is where you need to absolutely stop!

 

[AnitaPeterson]

1. I have W2k SP4.
2. The HD is now on the motherboard's primary IDE, not on a controller card.
3. The mobo is an Abit NFS-7, so it's new enough...

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
1. I have W2k SP4.
2. The HD is now on the motherboard's primary IDE, not on a controller card.
3. The mobo is an Abit NFS-7, so it's new enough...

Do you have the 48-bit LBA "BigDrive" fix applied?

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Mildlyamused
Hey this is simply my experience, when I had to do large file transfers for my sister and her friend who had well over 250GB worth of files, I had to do what I mentioned above. When ever I transfered more than about 20GB at a time the drive would overheat and crash and these were seagates! When the drives crashed, it would also crash the computer therefore forcing me to restart and when I checked what I copied over, most of it was corrupt. Drives do overheat, it's not a myth so doing this will ensure that you don't overheat your drive. Another way to make sure you don't overheat your drive is to install MBM5, enable the HDD sensor and try to make sure the temps don't go over like 50*c, 55*C is where you need to absolutely stop!

Yes, drives do overheat. No, it's not a myth.

Stopping every 20Gb, however, is utter nonsense.

Either you don't know how to cool drives, or they were faulty.

I've Ghost'd 120Gb of data from one drive to another, without ventilation, in one sitting, and both drives are still working flawlessly. They barely got warm.

 

[Venomous]

Sounds to me, youre having a ground out issue, which is causing the maxtor's to blow. I know that Maxtors are more senstive to voltage spikes then other drives. I recently built a box for a friend. It had a maxtor diamond series 9 drive in it, 160 gb i believe. After about 5 months, my friend decided to change cases and add some other equip to the box, including a second drive for video encoding.

Needless to say, he grounded out the motherboard in the new case. He called me for help. Upon arrival, i found he placed a standoff incorrectly, which caused the board to ground out.. Now, in conjunction with that, he took the maxtor out with it, including his new BenQ DVD burner. He did add a WD hd which survived the attack.

I woiuld serious look at replacing the ide cable and double check your grounds, case and power in the house my friend.

 

[IGBT]

..my 20gig maxtor failed over the weekend. I've had much better luck wit WD..and they seem quieter too. So I'll replace the 20gig maxtor with a 80 gig WD.

 

[Night Blade]

No matter what brand you pick, there will be failures, of all the drives i've used & sold over the years the highest problem mfg. i've had are in order IBM > WD > Maxtor/Quantum > Seagate > Samsung.

Only sold a couple IBM drives, but literly all of them failed 🙂.

WD is popular from a price stand point, but alot of failures over the years including a recent 40gb from a spare system, long track record of bad drives from WD.

Maxtor/Quantum is usually the cheapest of the bunch, sold alot of these along with WD, not as many problems as WD, my current rig uses a 250GB IDE DM+10, server 250GB IDE MLII. I believe I had more issues with there older line, from 10-40gb, newer ones have been working great for years.

Seagate sells good quality drives as stated, 5 year warranty is a plus.

Samsung is new to the market, good quality drives & just as quiet as Seagate, use a 160GB model in my HTPC & previously in my main machine.

IMO, spend the extra few $ & grab a Seagate or Samsung model, or stick with the new Maxtor DM+10/MLII/MLIII, 5 year warranty on the MaxLine.

 

[bradley]

I've been computing for over fifteen years, and have owned many hard drives: Western Digital, IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Samsung etc. And in that time, I have only experienced one hard drive failure -- just recently in fact. A 160GB Western Digital WD1600JB failed within twelve hours, making a huge clunking sound.

Although, I must say that the Western Digital's automated RMA process was superb. Filled out the RMA request on a Friday, and by Tuesday had a brand new drive. I was given exactly thirty days to cross-ship the defective drive, or risk my credit card being charged... all in all, a pleasant experience.

Otherwise, if someone experiences six concurrent hard drive failures, odds are it's probably due to improper handling and cooling, or bad power.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: nick1985
my maxtors have never failed on me. amazing how this works isnt it?

I know what you mean. People need to look at the whole picture. I will admit, my 120GB Maxtor died soon after I got it, luckily I didn't have much on it, but they sent me a brand new one, and so far it has been running quite strong for well over a year now..I think nearing two.

And, my moms computer has a 10GB maxtor that has been running for...maybe 3.5 years, not sure. Hell, even my IBM deathstar lasted far longer than the average.

 

[birdpup]

As already stated, because of the numerous failed hard drives, it is extremely improbable the problem is due to the hard drives. In summary:

Electrical Power Supply - If a company, have an electrician check the electrical wiring providing power to the servers, workstations, and desktops. Data is an extremely valuable asset that is more expensive to replace than having a building electrically rewired. If a home, consider purchasing a battery backup with a brownout protection feature to stabilize electrical input. The electrical power provided by the electric power company is not perfect and can be affected by many things including some tree branch intermittently brushing the wires and electrical storms. Small variations in the power supplied can have a large effect on sensitive electrical components.

Case Power Supply - Consider purchasing a new power supply. Read through Computer Forum's PSU 101 for more information on power supplies. Is the power supply large enough to reliably provide power to all the components now in the system? (as opposed to when the system was originally purchased.)

BIOS - The 128GB issue is most likely due to the bios. Try reflashing the bios and then checking the hard drive settings in the BIOS. Also check if the drive's physical geometry has been properly recognized by the bios. For such things, I tend to use FreeBSD to partition a hard drive. FreeBSD does not require the system BIOS for recognizing hard drives. Windows works just fine with a drive that has been partitioned by FreeBSD. As long as the filesystem is FAT or NTFS of course. 🙂

Promise Controller or Cable - The problems could be due to a faulty controller (inclusive) or cable.

Heat - The drives could be overheating. Are they stacked on top of one another? Do you hear the drives randomly powering off and then spinning back up to speed as they power up again? Are the drives encased in poorly ventilated removable bays? Try rigging a fan inside the case to blow air over the hard drives. This is very important if there are two or more drives physically next to each other.

Backups - I enjoy using external hard drives for backup purposes. It makes it much easier to swap data between systems, if needed.

Good luck and I wish you success.

 

[Mildlyamused]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: Mildlyamused
Hey this is simply my experience, when I had to do large file transfers for my sister and her friend who had well over 250GB worth of files, I had to do what I mentioned above. When ever I transfered more than about 20GB at a time the drive would overheat and crash and these were seagates! When the drives crashed, it would also crash the computer therefore forcing me to restart and when I checked what I copied over, most of it was corrupt. Drives do overheat, it's not a myth so doing this will ensure that you don't overheat your drive. Another way to make sure you don't overheat your drive is to install MBM5, enable the HDD sensor and try to make sure the temps don't go over like 50*c, 55*C is where you need to absolutely stop!

Yes, drives do overheat. No, it's not a myth.

Stopping every 20Gb, however, is utter nonsense.

Either you don't know how to cool drives, or they were faulty.

I've Ghost'd 120Gb of data from one drive to another, without ventilation, in one sitting, and both drives are still working flawlessly. They barely got warm.

Well these seagates got very hot, remember you got to touch them not only from the top but on the sides. The sides get very hot, I was checking in MBM5 and they were 50*C. Also keep in mind that I disable acoustic management on all drives because its useless for me anyways...

 

[RobCur]

Originally posted by: IGBT
..my 20gig maxtor failed over the weekend. I've had much better luck wit WD..and they seem quieter too. So I'll replace the 20gig maxtor with a 80 gig WD.

All hd runs hot, they suck up a lot of electricity and pretty much become useless after a few years.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
1. I have W2k SP4.
2. The HD is now on the motherboard's primary IDE, not on a controller card.
3. The mobo is an Abit NFS-7, so it's new enough...

Do you have the 48-bit LBA "BigDrive" fix applied?

Yes...
After running it and rebooting, the drive appears as 152 GB in Disk Management, Diskeeper sees it and can analyze it, but Ontrack still reports it at 128 GB.

Additionally, I started transferring files to it - again - from two external HDs, and I get error messages concerning files which worked before and vice-versa.

Haven't called Maxtor yet, but today is definitely the day.

 

[Auric]

Have not read the whole thread but if files are being transferred to and fro' failed/failing drives then the files and file system may be corrupted and restoring them to a new drive without checking first would lead to more grief. Did you run "chkdsk /r /f" ?