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My Maxtor gone BAD!

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BioTuned

BioTuned

Member
​
Joined
Feb 22, 2004
Location
Brookfield, Ohio
I don't know how, but one of my extra hard drive (maxtor) has gotten bad. I started to use a computer system for my girlfriend and i planned on using one of the few extra hard disks i keep just in case. Everything was set to go, and I started to load windows on it. It gets recognized in the bios, gets picked up in the windows xp installation. But after the first step of the windows xp (1st step = loading from cd-rom till rthe first reboot) and after the restart it would go straight back to the first step. Could never finish the windows installation. However i plugged it into my rig and used magic partition to see if it recognized or not. On it, it said BAD. i tried formating it to NTFS and it gave me an error "bad arguement/parameters" Is there anyway to fix this BAD to NTFS and make it bootable again.

FYI
I also tried the Maxtor program, but i couldn't get pass the selection of hard drives screen. (I was gunna write 0's on it)
 
How old is this drive? Have you run a diagnostic on it? I saw that you ran Maxtor's utility, but why is it you can't get past the drive selection screen?

If the drive is going south, aside from just file system corruption, then the only fix lies in your warranty.
 
If you can't get a diagnostic to even complete, your only option is to use your warranty to get a working drive.

If your worried about data recovery, there are other options you could try if theres something important to you on there you don't want to lose.
 
I'm not worried about data recovery. I used it in raid setup before. The funny thing is that i can access the drive from windows, but can't use it as a bootable drive. It has no recognized filing system. Maxtor RING RING =)
 
BioTuned said:
I'm not worried about data recovery. I used it in raid setup before. The funny thing is that i can access the drive from windows, but can't use it as a bootable drive. It has no recognized filing system. Maxtor RING RING =)
Click to expand...


Hmm, that doesn't sound like a bad drive to me. If it works and is recognizable when you boot from another drive then it's probably OK. I would try using something like partition magic or the Maxtor utilities to wipe the partition(s) and create new ones, then format. It could be that Windows / the Windows Setup just can't do this for whatever glitch.
 
Sounds like its a working drive, but you never explained what stopped you from running the diagnostic? I've run a lot of drive diagnostics, and can't say I've ever had a diagnostic fail when the drive wasn't dead or dieing. Sometimes bad drives pass the diagnostic, but never fail when good.

Not sure which diagnostic you were trying, but you'd definetly want to use the bootable CD version located here:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=d86e8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

That will let you test and format the drive, so you can go on to do what you were originally attempting.
 
That stupid Maxtor program hangs on about everything.

One of the major reason why I won't buy any Maxtor drive again.

To get a RMA you have to run that program and then take the number the program gives you to their website. If the program hangs - then what? Call them and convince them. Also, although that program is a floppy in itself they only provide a Windoze-based *.exe to make the floppy, not a plain floppy image. There is a ISO image somewhere but it wasn't obviously linked last time I had that problem. Overall, a loss-loss situation for non-Windoze people.

It didn't help that I had 2 out of 4 identical drives fail.
 
The link I gave you is a bootable ISO which you can burn on a CD. It requires a bootable CD drive, and is OS independent.

I've used the bootable CD extensively - it works. If it doesn't run, theres another hardware problem with your PC - its not that the program is bad. If it hangs, you tell Maxtor on what part of the test it hangs on, and they will send you another. I've never had a problem doing this, but things can vary depending on which tech you talk to.

I guess the good news is that Seagate aquired Maxtor, so if you have a problem with Maxtor in the past, things may be better now.
 
I attached the two errors i got from Partition Magic 8 and MaxBlast.

In the Partition Magic 8 i got that error when i tried to Format the drive to NTFS.

In the MaxBlast, i got the error when i selected the drive and pressed next to continue with the setup
 
Last edited:
YAY! GOOD NEWS!!!!

Thanks I.M.O.G. that program works just great. I tested it and it passed all the tests. Well two of which i did. The quick one and the long one. I then used the MaxBlast CD to and booted up with that cd. That cd never worked for me so i would install it on the windows then use the software. This time it just booted up and work just fine and i was able to format the drive to NTFS.

questiong when i tried to use the MaxBlast CD at the startup (bootable) it would give me an error like echo off. what does that mean?
 
What size is this drive and what board is it plugged into? It almost sounds like your having a drive size/translation issue between the MB and drive.
 
I've tried it with 4 different boards. P5N32-E SLI, EVGA 680i 122-CK-NF68-AR, P5AD2-E Pre and ABIT NF7-S. I will be using it on the Abit NF7-S. It is 250GB. I got the same problem with every board. Restart it goes BAD.
 
It has been formatted with ddo as the first link in your post shows. This should be removed by Maxtor tools before ntfs will se it as it's correct size. I forget what ddo is exactly, something Dynamic Overlay, that uses a different file system structure. I beleive that it was used to hide the drive size from Win 98 before it supported over 8.4 gigs. If you cannot remove ddo it may be that it still has a raid format on it instead. Use a an ms dos disk and delete the existing partition, and create a new one.
 
Writing zeros to the drive & then formatting should work.
I had serious problems with Windows files getting corrupted on my WD Raptor.
I tried running Western Digital's Diagnostic & as soon as I'd hit "R" to start the test, it would freeze. I figured the HDD had died, so in preparation for sending it back to WD, I used the WD Diagnostic to zero the drive. After that was done, I tried to run the diagnostic one more time, just to make sure the drive was gone. The diagnostic ran fine & the Raptor passed all tests with NO errors. I called WD & they said sometimes zeroing the drive & running the diagnostic will fix minor problems & that if I had further problems to call again. It's been running just fine ever since - more than a year.
-Dave
 
Get a boot cd with wipe on it. load it up type in the command "wipe 0" and hit y and if it crashes during that, try it again on another computer. ELSE the drive is dead.
 
Sorry guys, i was away for few days. But i do have some good news :) I got the damn drive to work. I wrote zeros on it. It took forever, but the wait paid off. After writing zeros, i used the maxtor's maxblast to set it up and it just works fine now. thanks for the help. i hope it doesn't give me a problem anymore.
 
Good, glad that worked for you. Often times figuring it out yourself is less painful waiting on the phone for the manufacturer, to finally get a tech who doesn't really care or know what he's doing.
 
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