R.I.P 2x Only 4 Hours old 300GB HDD

hi_tech_guy_18

hi_tech_guy_18

hi_tech_guy_18

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11 Oct 2004
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71
Two Brand New Maxtor DiamondMax 300GB 6L300R0 ATA-133 16MBs
Both Died within Hours of getting them! :(

Both now are Dead – Bios refuses to pick them up and one of the HDD is having a fit

Put my old HDDs back in and no Problems (oddy Both Maxtor)

Tested both of them on my other PC with spinright 6 it could not see them or even recover them

Spec 1: Main PC
AMD 64 FX-55 - 1 GB Ram - Motherboard Gigabyte GA-K8NXP

Spec 2: Workbench PC
AMD K7 XP +2200 - 512MB - Nforce 2 Ultra

Put forward an RMA Request to OC
Fingers Crossed I Hope my 2 HDD are not Part of a Bulk Bad batch
 
"is having a fit" At Post the Bios searches for the HDD (bios is set to auto detect HDD)

At that moment you hear the Hard drive Scratch around a load of times (Something it didnt do in the first 40 mins) sadly the bios cant detect it and gives up however the drive is still going nuts

I know for a fact the IDE-133 Cable is fine due I have my Working 200GB Maxtor Connected to it at the mo
 
I find it near impossible 2 new drives sold to same peep both are dead in 40mins, there is something wrong here or something on your hardware has killed them, check your 12v line from psu.
 
Its happened before now I did work in a shop and use to build PCs and we got a bad batch of HDDs now and again

Voltage rails are fine sitting at 12.3Volts

If there was a hardware fault it would have taken the whole system down.
And also my old HDD 200GB when I put it back in
 
Humey said:
I find it near impossible 2 new drives sold to same peep both are dead in 40mins, there is something wrong here or something on your hardware has killed them, check your 12v line from psu.
Click to expand...
When it comes to maxtor's consumer range, nothing is impossible :). Hope the next two you get are good, if not, why not go for Hitachi (as fast as Maxtors but more reliable).
 
Smid, you sure like to be a maxtor hater dont you lol, I could bring peeps here that could tell same story of every other manu, fact is I have had good service from them.

Im begining to think these drives aint even dead, something is funny, sure they could be both from bad batch but serial No would need be near each other.

Id try them in a different pc if thats possible.

Did you apply the big drive enabler, I know some think you dont need it, but fact is maxtor say you do and other manus now copied them and offer same reg patched, you obv need mobo with 48bit and xp sp1 at least but they still advise you run patch and its tiny and takes 1 reboot forver till you again format, and it only runs 1x so it must change something.

Not saying this is your issue, but all I can think of for now, but telling you maxtor are crap and to buy a hitachi aint really helping is it ?.


" Maxtor's Big Drive Enabler is a one step executable that enables support for drives larger than 137 Gigabytes in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and XP Service Pack 1. This utility takes the guess work out of editing the Windows registry. The Big Drive Enabler fixes an operating system limitation. This utility is needed anytime a Hard Disk Drive larger than 137 GB is connected to the motherboard's ATA bus, regardless of any system BIOS that supports 48-bit LBA. "

" Note: Failure to install the required service packs and install the Enable Big LBA patch can result in data loss when accessing the hard disk beyond 137 Gigabytes. For more information regarding Windows limitations and the 137 Gigabyte barrier please read Maxtor Knowledge Base Answer ID 960 and Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 303013. "
 
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I try to be helpful and I cannot wholeheartedly recommend a Maxtor Desktop drive to anyone.

And, no, I don't hate them - they have one of, if not THE, best SCSI drive in their 15K Atlas drive. Their SCSI drives are of excellent quality but they do not seem to have brought this standard to their consumer range which is appalling.

It sounds like the dreaded controller board problem which have plagued the DiamondMax10's. All over the internet people suffer with disappearing drives.
 
The Drives serial No's are Very close
and the Drives are dead Not even the Bios will pick them up

2 PC Confirm it since I'm going over to a friends house on sunday I will test them both with his PC since I'm working on his anyway
 
strange one that .. im running 3 x sata 300 gb maxtors in my htpc .. no probs to report.. put it down to a bad batch
 
Every drive i have ever bought for my self has been maxtor and never had any problems, untill a few weeks ago, ordered two diamonmax plus 10 250gb sata drives, one was dead on arrival the other was fine. the replacement is also ok. but it may just persude me to try another brand next time i order a drive, especially if maxtor seem to be doing a good job of supplying bad drives at the moment.
 
it's all down to the luck of the draw IMO. personally i have no probs with maxtors and the only drives i avoid are samsungs since theirs is the only drive that has ever completely failed on me out of dozens.

had it tested (free check from data recovery guy) and was told the board was dead and the head was completely locked/seized (whatever that means).

bad sectors etc i can handle, but the thing worked one minute, on next reset - poof, it's gone. no warning signs or anything. used hitachi/ibm/maxtor/WD/seagate/quantum/ and only samsung has died like that. enough for me to stay away from them anyways.

p.s. wont touch maxtors at the mo since they have (or had) a firmware prob and didnt play well with DFI NF4 mobos :)
 
forgot to add that i have a 30gig WD drive thats immortal!

had for about 5 years ish, and doesnt read or write above 8meg/sec, stops intermittently and makes a hell of a noise - clanging, banging etc, then resumes.

been doing that for 4 ish years and not a single bad sector yet :eek: :D
 
tbh, I've yet to have an issue with ANY of the old IBM drives I've got (all sub 100gig sadly) I even droped one out of a window (2nd floor) 4 years ago and its STILL WORKING TO THIS DAY!!
 
I know many people who have had problems with Maxtors, id stay clear.

The only drives I use in my own machines are Western Digital - fantastic drives :)
 
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