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Buggy Maxtor ATA HDD

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Mandachuva

Registered
Joined
Jan 25, 2006
Location
Timisoara
1600+ (1400Mhz) Athlon XP, oc'ed to 1750Mhz, generic 300w PSU, putting out 3.20V, 4.87V, 12.46V under idle load, 2 ATA 40Gb hard drives (one Maxtor, one Seagate), GeForce 2 MX400

I turn on the PC, and I hear it trying to spin up the Maxtor, and trying, and trying (for like 5-10 secs) then the power cuts off. SO, I turn off the PSU switch to let it calm down (nothing else works) for 10 secs, then try again. This time I hear the Maxtor finally spinning up to speed (after another 1-2 seconds of trying), but nothing else after this. Blank screen. I push the reset button, and now everything is working properly. I did burn-in test for hours after some of these power-ons, with no trouble at all. Sometimes, the Maxtor manages to spin-up the first time around, but I still get a black screen, and have to hit the reset button to get it working properly.

I've tried under-clocking my CPU, and removing the other HDD, and it seems to like that - it starts with more ease.

Is my Maxtor going the way of the dinosaurus, or could that be my PSU acting out???
 
Hi,

It could very well be your PSU or the BIOS hd controller startup routines that don't wait enough time for the drive to acquire necessary rotational speed.

I have a Maxtor Diamondmax9 200GBs that, when it was within an external USB enclosure, exhibited the same behavior at startup... now it lives inside my desktop and always spins up correctly..., so it can vey well be something external to the disk itself, but just in case, have a look at your SMART indicators, (specially the spin up time and spin up retry count) just to make sure your drive is OK.
 
Had checked the SMART indicators beforehand : they're the same as before it was acting out.

This problem appeared in the following manner : I started oc'ing my XP, no trouble. I kept to it for about a week, no trouble. I put an additiona HDD (Seagate ATA), the problem appeared. BUT, as I mentioned, now, even if I take the other HDD out, the problem is still there... :shrug:
 
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