maxtor diamond plus HDD problem

[Jermmd]

My relatively new 200Gb ATA/133 maxtor diamondplus HDD had been working fine until yesterday when I began getting a "disk read error" at boot up. Now When I boot my system I get a "Primary Master Hard disk fail" notification. The hard drive makes a musical beeping sound during boot up. I do not have a floppy drive and am unable to run the Maxtor diagnostic utility. The power, the jumper, and the IDE cable are not the problem. What do I do next, What might be the problem? I can reformat if that will get the drive functioning again.

My system includes a Via P4PB Ultra motherboard, Windows XP home, a CDRW drive, and an abit siluro Ti4200 128 Mb video card.

I think this problem may be very bad....

any suggestions?

Thanks,

Joe M.

 

[KenGr]

Reformat may help if it was just a random bad write or a software failure.

However, you need to run the diagnostic tools. I assume you have a bootable CD so get the Maxtor tools, burn them to CD and do the diagnostics.

 

[amdskip]

Definately get a floppy hooked up and do some testing and backing up quickly.

 

[Jermmd]

I tried unsuccessfully to load the maxtor tools onto a cd rom. I'll have to get a floppy drive and hook it up today.

Thanks,

Joe m.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Call Maxtor.

1-800- 2Maxtor

Seriously, this is the best thing you can do, because they will do their best to help you, and if the drive proves defective, they'll send another one...

 

[Jermmd]

So I called Maxtor and as per their instructions I booted the system without the ATA cable attached. Since I continued to hear the musical beeping, the HDD is shot. They're sending out a replacement today. Gotta hand it to them, great support and no hassles.

Thanks everybody,

Joe M.