Odd Maxtor issue. Corrupt firmware/board?

sirlemonhead

sirlemonhead

sirlemonhead

Associate
Joined
14 Dec 2005
Posts
563
Location
Dublin
Decided to give my pc case a clean out, as i've done numerous times before. A Chieftec case, so I remove the drive cage that has my Maxtor 6B200M0 200 gig sata drive and my old WD Ide drive in it, set it aside and clean the case out.

I put everything back together, power on....Sata bios thingy doesn't see the Maxtor. It's my main drive with 200 gigs worth of stuff I really don't want to lose :D

Running an AsRock Dual board with the Maxtor on one of the standard Sata 1 ports. Pc wont boot at all If i try the drive on the Sata 2 port. Not sure what that's about..anyway..

Try the usual stuff, different sata ports, cables, power leads, minimal hardware config, bios reset, you name it. No go on the Asrock board.

Pull out my old Abit NF7-S board, and lo and behold, the Maxtor is picked up. PowerMax doesnt seem to work, as it can't detect any drive attatched to the machine, but that could possibly be an incompatability with the controller on that board? ( I heard the maxtor software can be a pain in this regard )

Windows XP on that machine won't see the drive either. Nothing in Disk Management.

The drive sounds healthy...spins up and keeps whirring along happily like usual. No clicking or clunking or anything scary.

Occasionally the Bios *won't* pick up the drive, forcing me to do a reboot. Occasionally it incorrectly reports the model name of the drive as being a "Maxtou" And occasionally also misreports the drive capacity as being around 130-140 gigs in total.

Seeing as that's happening, and the drive mechanics themselves sound fine, I'm assuming this might be a drive firmware/circuit board issue?

Has anyone experienced anything like this? I'm nearly 100% certain the drive couldn't have suffered any electrostatic damage. And it was also fan cooled for the entire year and 3 months that i've had it.

I really want to get my data off the drive :(

Is there anything I can do? I was briefly reading threads about people having to flash their Maxtor firmware due to incompatabilities with NForce 4 boards, and am wondering if doing something like this to my drive might be a cure?

I'll appreciate any suggestions that get thrown at me :)
 
i had a problem reccur 3 times with an old dimondmax 60gig. Every time it was removed from the case it corrupted something that left the data intact but made it unbootable without an OS re-install. Could be a similar thing your suffering. If the windows bit has gone screwy then any 3rd party drivers for SATA installed will be defunkt. Safest way around is format an old crappy spare disk and install drivers for all disks/ sata controllers and boot from that, browse the disk and have a look see what the damage is, if any.
 
Do the numbers BANC1980 mean anything?

Basically it's the firmware id for that pesky maxtor, its probably the same as mine, kept vanishing randomly, maybe a week would pass without it happening then Pffft off it goes, unplug, wriggle cables etc and when it was ready it'd come back.

Anyway enough waffle :rolleyes: a firmware update seems to have sorted it
although i was at a stage where i didnt give a stuff, if it died then at least it wouldnt be a pain in my arris any more but it all went quite quick and smooth with no problems since.

I still have the firmware update here that deffo applies to the banc1980, if you want it just mail me (usual disclaimers apply if it goes fubar), but would defianately have a good google on "maxtor firmware updates" just to make sure it's that especially as theres stuff on it you want to keep.

HTH
 
Skilldibop, sorry I wasn't too clear. The drive is my OS drive,and i've already installed XP onto an old 10 gig drive alongside the Maxtor, and had no luck with it. Just won't appear in Windows or any other hardware identification program.


Steves_pc, I presume i'd only see the firmware revision number on the drive label? I'll yank it out when I get home and have a look. It's a DiamondMax 10 I think. Whatever revision that came with only a sata power connector, and not with a sata power connector plus molex power connector.

Cheers guys, i'll go check the drive details from the labels later and do a bit of reading on this firmware issue and get back to you :)
 
You shouldnt need to yank it out if this works(assuming it's detected it for a change), pop into device manager then disk drives - double click the offending item, on the properties page that should appear goto details where you should see a drop down box listing Device Instance Id underneath it you'll see
IDE\DISK(HDD MAKE & MODEL HERE)___________BANC1980\ long string of numbers.

Should save you having to unplug it, also stops you from chucking out the window if its been annoying you :eek: :D
 
Just tried getting a firmwarm update to work, and no luck. The program says it cant find any drives. I guess my Sata controller is unsupported by the Maxtor program seeing as it's a Raid controller :\

I found out that i'm currently running the BANC1B10 firmware though. I had to check the drive label to find that out, the drive is completely undetectable in windows and no amount of cable wiggling seems to fix that. My Asrock board doesnt even detect the drive on the sata controller AT ALL.

:(
 
Thats being a bit of a pig, almost sounds like it's died totally :(
Tried any other SATA's on your board just to make sure?

I dont recall seeing the BANC1B10 as having had issues but then was searching for the BANC1980, upped it to BANC1E00 and been 100% since
 
I cant even boot my Asrock board with it on the Sata 2 port. The board just freezes after counting up the ram.

It's picked up by the bios on my Abit board, but after that, no programs can detect the drive :\ I've tried windows, maxtors tools and a knoppix live cd too. No luck.

The only other sata device I can test is using an Abit adapter to hook an IDE drive up to the Sata ports. That works fine.

Do you think its just the controller? It sounds like the drive is spinning fine..
 
It's not sounding too good is it, When you say tried in windows was that under Disk Management?

Just wondering if it's somehow lost the partition info, although that doesnt explain why it suddenly not detected on the asrock, if it's not that then even i'd be thinking it was the controller too.
 
join the club, i've just lost 2 maybe 3 MAxtor 200GB drives (6L200M0 and 6B200M0) from a RAID 5 array - more than likely due to a power issue we had yesterday.

4 power drop outs/surges in 30mins, that only affected certain things in the house, not the TV we were watching, or sky box, but the PC's upstairs, the lights, and alarm clock.

powermax software won't detect drives on my 8RDA6+Pro although SIL bios sees it (but notes it as no valid devices)

gonna see what electricity board are gonna do about it - but may end up claiming on house contents insurance

Ogbyte
 
Steves_pc said:
It's not sounding too good is it, When you say tried in windows was that under Disk Management?

Just wondering if it's somehow lost the partition info, although that doesnt explain why it suddenly not detected on the asrock, if it's not that then even i'd be thinking it was the controller too.
Click to expand...

Yeah cant see it at all under disk management.

What's worrying me is that it occasionally misreports the size on the Abit board, and occasionally calls it a "Maxtou" drive :mad:
 
Sounds like it's a gonner :( , about the only other thing to try if you can get one would be another drive same model and swap the controllers over, if it's still in warranty then it's Rma time and queue up them Pron torrents :eek: :D

other than that i think you may have just had bad luck, there'll be those who say "what do you expect from Maxtor" but hey i'm still running 4 of them with no problems.
 
well after a days r'sing around - it appears (touch wood) that everything is back again.

Had to use another pc with a 8RDA3+ mobo in it to run powermax software which found the drives first time - only one drive had an issue which the powermax software fixed.

plugged em back into Adaptec SATA raid controller, which had originaly declared the array as failed - restore raid, and rebooted and bobs-ya-uncle everything was back again.

did a quick backup of important docs and testing by streaming some of the stored avi's etc and it seems ok.

hope OP gets his sorted out also

Ogbyte
 
I'll try the drive on a friend's machine at the weekend and see if I have any luck with that, or else i'll try get hold of one of those converters to allow me to plug the sata drive into an IDE port.

Worth a shot I guess :(
 
Hell yeah, it's got to be worth a shot, if only to recover your data.

thinking about getting one of those Enermax external jobbys that does ide/sata to usb 2, handy for when a drive spits it's dummy out or for the upgrade leftovers.

Fingers crossed, your mates pc will detect it ok.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom