Maxtor 6Y120P0 Drive reporting 33.6 GB

[metalliphreak1]

My Maxtor 120 GB drive is reporting 33.6 GB in bios. Is this a software problem that can be fixed or must I send it to Maxtor to get a new one?

Thanks

 

[K1ll1nT1m3]

Have you tried running Maxtors Powermax?

 

[OSUmaxx]

First, try running Maxtor's utility as was stated. If its reporting incorrectly in the BIOS, I don't think it would be a software error. What motherboard are you using? If its very old, maybe a BIOS flash is in order (last resort).

 

[KILLorBE]

It could be a BIOS limitation (32GB, but some BIOS's may report a slightly different size), in that case you could try MaxBlast III.

 

[metalliphreak1]

P4 2.6C, 1GB Corsair XMS 3200 DDR, AIW 9700 Pro, Audigy 2, Maxtor 80 GB 8 MB cache, Lian-Li PC-60 case, Maxtor 120 GB 8 MB Cache, Asus P4P800 Deluxe mobo. I also had problems with maxblast when I installed it, shouldn't have installed it anyway. The problem came when I tried to resize my Windows partition and Partition Magic came up with an "EZ Drive" error, I thought EZ Drive was not used anymore. The HD worked for a few weeks at 120 GB, until I tried to reinstall EZ Drive through DOS.

Thanks

 

[KILLorBE]

I think you accidently installed EZ Drive when you used the MaxBlast software, they still supply the software for those that have a MOBO that doesn't support large drives.

If there's no important data on the drive, I would suggest you do a low level format using PowerMax, as that's the only way to get rid of it (EZ Drive is in the boot sector).

As you have noticed EZ Drive can cause problems on MOBO's that DO support large drives, but it less likely to cause problems on MOBO's that do not support large drives.

Some more info about EZ Drive taken from WD:

What is EZ-Drive's relation to the Master Boot Record?

When EZ-Drive controls a hard drive in a system whose BIOS cannot support the size of the drive, the Master Boot Record is stored on the second sector of the hard drive. The first sector contains EZ-Drive code also known as EZ-BIOS. Sectors 3 thru 17 also contain EZ-Drive code, code that is referred to as the INT13 Handler (INT13 deals with hard disk services). When the system is powered on, it looks at the first sector of the hard drive for boot instructions. In this case, the boot sequence is as follows:

1) EZ-Drive code loads from sector 1.
2) EZ-Drive loads the INT13 Handler located at sectors 3 thru 17 and uses this information to set up the hard drive for proper access.
3) EZ-Drive loads the regular Master Boot Record found on sector 2 which in turn loads the operating system.

Hope that helped.

 

[KILLorBE]

Did you solve the problem?

As for accidently installing EZ Drive, I was probably wrong, I recently (Thursday) bought a Maxtor drive and used the MaxBlast util. to partition the drive, everything went fine, but as I bought the drive to backup some stuff from a RAID array that I can't access using Windows, I tried PQ DriveCopy, guess what?.....no can do, you're using a disk manager that doesn't run (EZ crap), after I did a quick LLF and partitioned using Fdisk everything was fine.

Lesson:
NEVER use MaxBlast to partition your drives if your MOBO supports large HDD's!!!

PS: I always thought that you had an option to install EZ Drive/BIOS, guess that was only with the ancient version(s) of MaxBlast (maybe not).

 

[metalliphreak1]

Well, my friend showed me this program called KillDisk and we used that to delete everything off the drive, after which we uninstalled it. I proceeded to use MaxBlast III to reinstall it, Windows detects the drive again, but in Partition Magic i still get the same error. I know it's that drive, because while it was uninstalled Partition Magic worked perfectly. So today I think I will do the LLF using FDisk and see how that goes. Now to fix "rundll32 as an app has failed" problem when using Remote Wonder software...

 

[K1ll1nT1m3]

If you run FDISK, you will lose all data. That board should have no problems with that HDD. Are you using XP? Have you tried to reinstall the OS?

 

[metalliphreak1]

I know that I will lose all data if running FDisk. I am running WinXP, and I have yet to reinstall it. I'm pretty sure the problem is with the MaxBlast software, which I shouldn't have used in the first place.

 

[K1ll1nT1m3]

Have you removed the OS from the HDD? ( im kind of confused, sorry )

 

[metalliphreak1]

No, I've yet to do that also. My plan is to reformat both of my hard drives and start clean. When? Probably over break.

 

[K1ll1nT1m3]

I dont think you would have to do a low level format to fix these problems. Just doing a fresh install should be enough. If you havent tried the automated repair option ( secound one after the cd boots ), I would try that. It might be able to fix things till you do a reinstall. Good luck