AthlonAlien Posted April 18, 2005 Posted April 18, 2005 UPDATE!!! -------------- :nod: :nod: :nod: My computer has successfully made it through the weekend without any problems! It looks to me as if the firmware updates fixed the issue. My drive is now always detected and window's start-ups are actually faster I would recommend this to anyone having similiar problems.... It may be wise to contact Maxtor yourself and see exactly which procedures and firmwares they recommend. They were VERY quick in responding to my requests... I do still have the firmwares and utilities if anyone needs them... -LaTeR Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulh Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Hello I had similar problems like you with my Maxtor drive, but more random. Sometimes (once every week) the drive would not boot or windows would hang during heavy load (especially when I played Rome Total War). I moved the drive to from the SATA1 to SATA4 connector and since then everyting works fine. But it is good to know that there is another solution for this problem if it appears again on my computer. paulh ____________________________ Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D 3/10/2005 BIOS AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Winchester) @ 2250 (Zalman 7000B-Cu ) 2x512MB Kingmax Hardcore DDR500 @ 500 Leadtek nVidia 6600GT 128MB @ mem1.11, core 555 (Zalman VF700 vga cooler) AKASA AK-P460FG Paxpower 460W 24Pin 2x AKASA AK-182-L2B 80-120mm case fans (very quiet fans) 1x AKASA AK-183-L2B 120mm case fan Maxtor Diamondmax 10 250GB SATA Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoken Joe Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Good to hear you had it fixed. I had the same kind of problem on my nforce2 board simple fix sent it back and got a WD. I hope they start shipping with the updated firmware. Looks like somthing to avoid for now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angry_Games Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 going to [Resolve] this and sticky it for a couple of days just in case anyone else comes across the problem good work AA Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoken Joe Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Maby you could post the firmware or at least give a name for it to save some others time now that it is a sticky AA. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AthlonAlien Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Ok guys, here is some info... My hard drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B300S0 (300GB, SATA(II)150, 7200RPM, 16MB, NCQ). The stock firmware was BANC1B70. When I contacted Maxtor, they informed me I would need to update to BANC1BY0 first... then update to BANC1E00. They sent me 2 files... BANC1BY0.EXE and BANC1EE0SABRE.EXE. Here is the flashing procedure... 1. Create a bootable Windows 98/ME diskette (WinXP - go to My Computer, right-click A:, select Format, check the "Create MS-DOS boot disk" option, click Start button) 2. Insert boot diskette into floppy drive and run BANC1BY0.EXE (check the "Writing on floopy" box and click OK... the Disk Image utility will extract the firmware to the diskette) 3. Insert ANOTHER diskette into floppy drive and run BANC1EE0SABRE.EXE (the Disk Image utility will extract an image to the floppy disk) 4. Boot from FIRST floppy and flash firmware (reboot PC with floppy in drive, at the C: prompt... type "DLOAD /I", when asked to confirm flash... tell it ok, may have to select top option saying "Download Firmware..." 5. Reboot with new firmware, and update firmware again (reboot PC with SECOND firmware boot diskette in drive, it should autorun, you may see an error about E0Z flash mismatch, tell it to ignore and flash anyways [Maxtor told me this was a known issue], select the top option saying "Download Firmware..." 6. Reboot PC again with new firmware That procedure should work fine... I was trying to remember how I did it on Friday :shake: BTW, if you want to confirm your firware version... you can boot from the FIRST floppy diskette and do the DLOAD /I command again... then just look in the top right corner for the f/w ver... do NOT attempt to flash back to DISK 1's f/w I can't really confirm that this will work for anything other than the 6B300S0 with BANC1B70... but you are free to try I have compressed the 2 files into a .ZIP, but it is 1.57MB... apparently dfi-street allows only 100KB... If anyone wants it, I can e-mail it to you... possibly someone could host it?! -LaTeR Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Can you flash the drive with an nforce board or just strictly intel. I guess the sata controller has a lot to do with it. Is this for IDE maxtor drives also? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Merlin Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 I had the maxtor disappearing problem too, I found a new firmware on a forum. Now the drives work perfect, hasn't disappeared once since the update! I tried the maxtor support but they were not interested in helping me at all. He suggested bios update for the motherboard, however I already had the latest bios so that way was kinda closed. Bottomline: HARDDRIVE FIRMWARE FIXES THIS ISSUE. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AthlonAlien Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Aaron, Maxtor said it wasn't platform specific (AMD vs. Intel). But they did say it was only guaranteed to work on regular SATA controllers. SATA controllers that feature the RAID function, are hit and miss (EVEN if you disable the RAID part in BIOS). As I mentioned earlier, you MAY be able to bypass the SATA RAID issue if you use a standard Win98 boot disk instead of the Maxtor boot image, however this is NOT confirmed. Also, according to Maxtor... the "newer SATA drives" are the only ones with issues... Merlin, Great to hear you have resolved your issue too -LaTeR Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Posted April 19, 2005 Posted April 19, 2005 Aaron, Maxtor said it wasn't platform specific (AMD vs. Intel). But they did say it was only guaranteed to work on regular SATA controllers. SATA controllers that feature the RAID function, are hit and miss (EVEN if you disable the RAID part in BIOS). As I mentioned earlier, you MAY be able to bypass the SATA RAID issue if you use a standard Win98 boot disk instead of the Maxtor boot image, however this is NOT confirmed. Also, according to Maxtor... the "newer SATA drives" are the only ones with issues... Merlin, Great to hear you have resolved your issue too -LaTeR Haven't actually got the drive yet but this is the one I want for sure. I find these forums very helpful to identify issues with hardware so I know what to do if something does happen. I am still waiting on the Athlon 64 Venice core. That is the only thing holding me back. I want to buy everything at once because of how prices drop so fast. Does Maxtor have a link to the firmware on their site? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AthlonAlien Posted April 20, 2005 Posted April 20, 2005 No, Maxtor does not have these firware updates on their site. -LaTeR Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raffin Posted April 20, 2005 Posted April 20, 2005 This issue *may* also be caused by pin 11 on the SATA connector not being grounded. If pin 11 is not grounded, the drive uses a delayed spin up and may not be detected in BIOS. This is to prevent too great a power drain on the power supply if you have multiple drives installed. I have seen this problem on my system, even with the HD delay set to 10 seconds in BIOS. In my case this may not help since I'm using an add-in RAID controller. Maxtor's documentation on the problem. I will, however, be contacting Maxtor for the firmware updates in addition to checking my SATA connector for proper grounding on pin 11. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now