Maxtor HD, Bad Sectors, LLF to fix?

[Penth]

I have a server with 4 Maxtor 160GB IDE drives. One of them was always having data corruption and losing everything on the drive, saying it wasn't formatted. I finally did a long format instead of a quick format, and ran chkdsk. Chkdsk shows that out of 160GB, 25GB are in bad sectors. Can a low level format fix that, or should I just RMA it?

 

[imported_Phil]

No, you can't fix physical errors on the drive.
RMA it.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Penth
I have a server with 4 Maxtor 160GB IDE drives. One of them was always having data corruption and losing everything on the drive, saying it wasn't formatted. I finally did a long format instead of a quick format, and ran chkdsk. Chkdsk shows that out of 160GB, 25GB are in bad sectors. Can a low level format fix that, or should I just RMA it?

25GB????????
That's a crazy amount. You sure that's not MB? Even 25MB is a helluva lot. I just worked on a 15GB drive that had a few hundred bad sectors, but it only amounted to a few hundred KB. Just that number made the drive incredibly slow as it tried to navigate around them. You can try the zero-write thing with Maxtor's Powermax software, or whatever it's called. It takes many hours to finish though. If it detects errors from the start, it won't do anything, and it'll probably just advise an RMA anyway.

I just wonder that that's not some kind of really forked up logical error, to have that many bad sectors. 25GB of bad sectors should NEVER have passed at the factory.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

No surprise here, my 160 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 9 is also reporting a huge amount of data loss in Easy Recoivery Pro... out of about 150 GB of data on it, I can - at best - recover 110 GB...

Penth, what model HD are you talking about?

 

[Penth]

It's a DiamondMax Plus 8MB cache. Yes, I'm sure it's 25GB, That's probably why windows has been telling my the drive isn't formatted ever few days. Luckily this time I didn't lose anything because I just copied stuff to the drive instead of moving it. Anyway, I guess I'll RMA it.

 

[SGtheArtist]

RMA

You can not fix bad sectors. My Seagate X15 had these and it took me 6 months to figure it out. Bad sectors can cause all sorts of problems and be completely random.

Just my experience.

 

[RobCur]

diamondmax my ass lol more like crapmax series
I don't use maxtor low quality hd at all since they invented hd.
i'd use to buy them all the time in the 90's because it was cheapest but it had many problems ranging from DOA to bad sectors after a week of usage.
it is GARBAGE

Now I just use Seagate, Samsung, WD, MDT

No problems!!!

 

[RobCur]

What's the point of RMA'ing this sucker? after the first time I would have had it cause no hd should have any problems within the first few years.
This is a sign of bad products, I would had learn my lesson by that time...
Good luck fellas Maxtor users. It's what retailors love to sell to you like best buy, compusa, sam's club. Why don't they have anything else? cause they think maxtor rules

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: RobCur
What's the point of RMA'ing this sucker? after the first time I would have had it cause no hd should have any problems within the first few years.
This is a sign of bad products, I would had learn my lesson by that time...
Good luck fellas Maxtor users. It's what retailors love to sell to you like best buy, compusa, sam's club. Why don't they have anything else? cause they think maxtor rules

Add me to the list that doesn't like Maxtor. All of my Maxtor drives - have had troubles with bad sectors. One was a 200GB drive, only maybe a few months old.

I am fully Seagate now. Only for 3 months, granted - but then, I ordered 7 drives all at the same time. 5 of them run nearly continuously. No problems yet.

 

[Penth]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Penth
I have a server with 4 Maxtor 160GB IDE drives. One of them was always having data corruption and losing everything on the drive, saying it wasn't formatted. I finally did a long format instead of a quick format, and ran chkdsk. Chkdsk shows that out of 160GB, 25GB are in bad sectors. Can a low level format fix that, or should I just RMA it?

25GB????????
That's a crazy amount. You sure that's not MB? Even 25MB is a helluva lot. I just worked on a 15GB drive that had a few hundred bad sectors, but it only amounted to a few hundred KB. Just that number made the drive incredibly slow as it tried to navigate around them. You can try the zero-write thing with Maxtor's Powermax software, or whatever it's called. It takes many hours to finish though. If it detects errors from the start, it won't do anything, and it'll probably just advise an RMA anyway.

I just wonder that that's not some kind of really forked up logical error, to have that many bad sectors. 25GB of bad sectors should NEVER have passed at the factory.

I think you may be right about the logical error. I now have two drives that both show this. It's on an Asus K7V, all drives are connected to the onboard Promise controller. I wonder if I'm hitting the 128GB/137GB Barrier in respect to the controller but windows is ignoring it, and causing problems.

160079660 KB total disk space.
24 KB in 5 files.
16 KB in 13 indexes.
25861996 KB in bad sectors.
70888 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
134146736 KB available on disk.

Both have the exact same 25861996 KB in bad sectors. Any ideas?

 

[Penth]

Bump before bed. Thanks for any help.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

could a virus cause this?

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Penth

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Penth
I have a server with 4 Maxtor 160GB IDE drives. One of them was always having data corruption and losing everything on the drive, saying it wasn't formatted. I finally did a long format instead of a quick format, and ran chkdsk. Chkdsk shows that out of 160GB, 25GB are in bad sectors. Can a low level format fix that, or should I just RMA it?

25GB????????
That's a crazy amount. You sure that's not MB? Even 25MB is a helluva lot. I just worked on a 15GB drive that had a few hundred bad sectors, but it only amounted to a few hundred KB. Just that number made the drive incredibly slow as it tried to navigate around them. You can try the zero-write thing with Maxtor's Powermax software, or whatever it's called. It takes many hours to finish though. If it detects errors from the start, it won't do anything, and it'll probably just advise an RMA anyway.

I just wonder that that's not some kind of really forked up logical error, to have that many bad sectors. 25GB of bad sectors should NEVER have passed at the factory.

I think you may be right about the logical error. I now have two drives that both show this. It's on an Asus K7V, all drives are connected to the onboard Promise controller. I wonder if I'm hitting the 128GB/137GB Barrier in respect to the controller but windows is ignoring it, and causing problems.

160079660 KB total disk space.
24 KB in 5 files.
16 KB in 13 indexes.
25861996 KB in bad sectors.
70888 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
134146736 KB available on disk.

Both have the exact same 25861996 KB in bad sectors. Any ideas?

Based on the bits I've highlighted, that does seem to make a lot of sense, especially if they have the exact same number of "bad" sectors.

Can you try a newer PCI card, or on the onboard controller?

 

[Penth]

I guess I can try the onboard controller. I've got 7 HDs in the computer, so I need both controllers to work, but I guess if the Promise controller is causing all the problems then I can get a PCI controller. Too bad none of the HDs are SATA or I'd just get a new Motherboard/CPU/RAM. It seems like there would e a way to update the promise controller to support large disks. I looked at the latest bios for the A7V and it adds support for 48-Bit HDs so maybe I'll give that a try when I get home from work tonight. Thanks for the ideas.

 

[aka1nas]

I am running an A7V in my file server and I did have some issues with 160GB Maxtors on the promise controller. Are all your drives that big? I solved the issue by putting my pair of 160GB drives on the regular IDE controller and putting my boot drive and another smaller drive on the promise controller.


Edit: I did try upgrading to a later BIOS that supposedly supported a 48 bit LBA but I think I was still getting capped at the 128GB. Worst case, disable that promise controller and get a $20 2 channel PCI ATA adapter and use that instead.

 

[Penth]

I moved the drives to the standard onboard controller and formatted them and both are working at full capacity with 0 bad sectors now. I guess I'll have to buy a PCI controller when I pick up another drive over 160GB. Thanks anyone who helped.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Penth
I moved the drives to the standard onboard controller and formatted them and both are working at full capacity with 0 bad sectors now. I guess I'll have to buy a PCI controller when I pick up another drive over 160GB. Thanks anyone who helped.

Glad to hear it :thumbsup:

I'll definitely remember that one, although I suspect that it happens when the drives are already formatted to their full native size, and then moved onto the controller, which then can't translate any addresses beyond 24-bit properly.