[Resolved] resolution for disappearing Maxtor drives? (post #12)

[RafaDel]

LOL you have to answer lots of questions to get a firmware that does not even work with NCQ...

 

I understand that I can disable NCQ for stability but what heck I paid for an NCQ drive and should be my option to use it or not.

[Bushwacka]

Here´s the original answer mail from Maxtor

 

"Dear Sir or Madam,

 

Thank you for your interest in Maxtor and our products. In order to find a solution to your problem, we will need some additional information. Please give us as many details as possible:

 

Serial number:

Model number and/or GTLA number:

 

Motherboard make/model?

Processor / chipset?

 

SATA Controller make/model (please also specify whether this is an onboard controller or an additional PCI card)?

Please list the drives attached to this card:

 

Are you using any other IDE controllers?

If yes, what is the manufacturer/make/model?

Did this controller card come built-in to the motherboard as an additional controller or was it added at a later stage?

Does this controller support UDMA100/133?

Did you install any additional drivers for it?

Are there any devices attached to it?

 

Do you have a SCSI card?

If yes, what is the manufacturer/make/model?

Are there any devices attached to this card?

 

What Operating System are you using (please include revisions and installed service packs)?

 

How did you partition the drive, what file system was used (FAT32, NTFS), which program did you use (MaxBlast, fdisk, disk management, partition magic etc.)?

 

Is this a new install or a problem with an existing drive?

 

What are the symptoms?

Are there any error messages? If so, please give them in detail.

 

Is the drive seen in the auto detection in your system BIOS or if additional card is it seen in the controller BIOS?

 

What is the boot sequence set to in the BIOS?

 

Is the drive seen correctly in Device Manager (Windows only) and/or Disk Management (Win XP and 2000 only)?

 

Did you use Max*Blast ? What version?

If yes, was the EZDrive BIOS or DDO extension software loaded to your hard drive i.e. do you receive a message on boot up starting with "EZBIOS initialising...." or a message relating to "Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO)"?

 

If you are using a removable caddy, please remove it and connect the drive directly to the SATA cable.

 

What is the Primary Master:

" Primary Slave:

" Secondary Master:

" Secondary Slave:

If you are using a parallel ATA controller card or an additional parallel ATA onboard controller, please also list what is attached to it.

 

Are there any jumpers set on the SATA drive?

 

If you ran our diagnostic utility PowerMax, please let us know which version you used and what the results were:

 

Any other details that may be helpful:

 

Also include your daytime phone number in case we need to call you.

 

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us. In order to allow us to deal with all enquiries as efficiently and accurately as possible we would ask that you include any previous emails when replying to us.

 

 

Kind Regards,

 

Ian McHardy

Customer Support Team, Maxtor Ireland Ltd.

"

 

Answering those question would take forever and my garanty time would be over hehe, so it would be nice if someone could send me the firmware via mail.

[Nil Einne]

While it may seem pointless to answer the big list for a firmware update, generally HD manufacturers are reluctant to hand out firmware update willy nilly, they need to be convince it may help you.

 

And really if you look at it, despite it's length, it shouldn't take you more then 5-10 minutes to answer the whole list.

 

P.S. The answer to many of those questions should be in the compulsary signature anyway!!!

[TekNoMancer]

Hi everyone. I also have a Maxtor 300GB SATAII 16MB and am experiencing the same problems. It seems that Maxtor has to bear the onus for most of these problems, but shouldn't DFI be concerned too? Has anyone heard what they're doing about it? Will it be fixed with the next board or another BIOS? This is the third system I've ever built, and the first two never had any issues and they're still running today.

 

BTW, there's a lot of good advice listed in this thread. Thanks! I'll try everything that I can to get this to work.

 

Oh, and this might make some of you feel better about your situation. Have a laugh! :shake: :

 

On my first pass at building this latest system, the guy at Fry's handed me an nF3 250Gb and told me that it would work with the same HDD. I had to learn the hard way that the nF3 didn't support SATAII! I marched right back into the store (past the return deadline :angel: ) and they told me that they couldn't do anything about it! :mad: Geez, that's what I get for trusting a Fry's Sales Peon/Moron. I feel like a tard. :tooth: So, now I have a 754-proc and mobo unused.

my_bank = money->flush(toilet);

[Bitgod]

Yeah, I can see that the questionare looks like a pain, but I can also see if they're trying to research the cause, they need feedback from people.

 

In my case, I used money to fix the issue and bought my sata2 drives. And then I bought a nice lil sata-to-USB enclosure from Newegg and I'll make my DM10 be my external MP3 drive, I needed a bigger drive anyway. Hopefully going through the USB chipset bridge and bus gets rid of the issue with the DM10 and mobo, I'll have to try some on and off transfers first before trusting my data on it.

[Bushwacka]

I´m using 4x 200GB Maxtors in a Raid5 Array, but I can´t even initialize the Raid without loosing a HD. The controller (RocketRaid 2220) always beeps on me and tells me that a HD went offline. Tried to flash the Maxtors with the new firmware today, but the tool told me that no harddisk was found. Am I right and I can flash the Maxtors only using a PCI S-ATA Controller Card without Raid function or is there another way to get those HD recognized? Guess I have to buy one only to flash those damn Hds.

[jetjaguar]

i have 2x maxtor 6B300S0 hds .. and they always disappear after a freeze or power off .. fine if i reboot .. does anyone have the updated firmware for these .. pls email them to me .. i would greatly appreciate it

 

[email protected]

[soundx98]

Never A Good Idea To List Your E-mail In A Forum.

 

The Spam-bots Will Get You For Sure.

[SADtherobot]

On my first pass at building this latest system, the guy at Fry's handed me an nF3 250Gb and told me that it would work with the same HDD. I had to learn the hard way that the nF3 didn't support SATAII!

 

The fact that the NF3 doesnt support SATA/300 should have no bearing on that hard drive purchase since that drive isnt actually SATA/300. I posted the following in another thread, but it applies to your case as well:

 

"the problem you are having has nothing to do with drivers or the board, you, as well as MANY others, fell for Maxtor's false advertising. Maxtor claims that because the DM10/Maxline3 drives are native SATA and support NCQ, that they are somehow SATA2 drives. None of the Maxtor drives support the SATA300 speed, they are the only company that doesn't support it right now, yet they still claim that their drives are SATA2. I guess the only way they can get away with saying that is because they support the NCQ feature, but it is not mandatory in the SATA2 spec, just like the SATA1 spec, so I have no clue what part of the drive is SATA2. I think that currently, the worst hard drives you can get are the Maxtor DM10/Maxline3 drives because they have massive incompatibilities with all drive controllers (firmware updates are required most of the time to get the drive working at all, trust me, I've had to deal with this problem WAY too much) and because they falsely advertise SATA2, which confuses people."

 

The bottom line is that Maxtor's DM10/Maxline3 series are not SATA/300, but that wouldnt matter anyway because SATA/300 is backwards compatible with SATA/150, so it would work with your NF3 board even if it were a true SATA/300 drive.

 

i have 2x maxtor 6B300S0 hds .. and they always disappear after a freeze or power off .. fine if i reboot

 

I was having the same problem with these drives. They would cause the system to lock up in Windows, then upon reboot, the drive would no longer be detected. There is a chance that the firmware update will help, but as I've mentioned in other threads, it doesnt always work.

 

I posted this in the 5/10 BIOS thread about 3 months ago, but I received no response at all:

 

"Does anybody know if any fixes have been implemented for the 2 extremely annoying Maxtor Diamond Max 10s that have the detection issue (models 6B250S0 and 6B300S0)? I know that there is a thread about correcting the problem (I've read it, and many others like it), but the firmware update on the drive does not appear to work every time. I have read on many other forums that both a BIOS update and firmware update are necessary. I was wondering if any steps have been taken by DFI to help remedy Maxtor's fault (which they claim is not an issue). I know that the 1004 BIOS (and above) on the crappy Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe has some sort of fix for this drive (I've tested it A LOT), they claim they updated the SATA bootrom to help detect this drive model. MSI has also claimed that they fixed the issue with their v1.2 BIOS, but I am unable to test that board. If anyone knows if the 5/10 BIOS helps fix this issue, please let me know."

 

Since I posted that, I was able to test an NF4-based MSI board, the combination of new motherboard BIOS and new drive firmware fixed the detection issues on the MSI board. The issue with the drives is not limited to NF4-based boards either (as some people tend to think), I've found that these Maxtor drives have compatibility issues with almost every SATA controller, whether it be onboard or PCI based. An example would be Bushwacka, his Highpoint RocketRAID card constantly loses drives:

 

I´m using 4x 200GB Maxtors in a Raid5 Array, but I can´t even initialize the Raid without loosing a HD. The controller (RocketRaid 2220) always beeps on me and tells me that a HD went offline.

 

The most annoying part about the Maxtor drive problem is that the firmware updates only work with certain SATA controllers, so once you waste your time dealing with tech support and you actually get the firmware updates, you probably wont even be able to update your drives using the computer that they are connected to (this is true for nForce users).

 

I can't believe Maxtor released such a terrible drive, and an even worse fix for the problem. They falsely advertise the interface, confuse people about speeds, blame the lack of features on the chipset (there is another thread on this forum discussing this, Maxtor blames nVidia for it's own false speed advertising), and blame all of the non-detection issues on the motherboard and chipset (nVidia, Silicon Image, Highpoint, Promise, etc.) manucturers. I've been dealing with this problem since December 2004 and I think that the only way that Maxtor could possibly make up for their actions would be to make a firmware update that actually fixes the problems, can be used with ALL chipsets, and is publicly available.

 

Edit: I believe I've found the reason that Maxtor is able to claim that their drives are able to be called "SATA2". The DM10/Maxline3 drives support a feature called "staggered spin-up", which is part of the SATA2 spec (and what is also causing the problem). Both SATA300 (3Gbps) and NCQ are optional features of the SATA2 spec, but most SATA2 drives have them. So far it seems as though the Hitachi SATA2 drives are the best because they support both SATA300 and NCQ, even the new WD SATA2 drives don't support these (the drive shows up as SATA300, but the burst speed is NO different than in SATA150 mode), they are basically as worthless as the Maxtor drives, just a 16MB cache (on the 250GB+ models, like Maxtor's), but without NCQ (only the 400GB has NCQ).

[SADtherobot]

Info has been moved to previous post.

[cischico]

Wow, I have a DIamond Max10 300GB SATA version. I was always wondering why my drive would disappear sometimes. If you have the firmware please email and I'll upload to my site so everyone can easily get it.

 

 

Email: [email protected]

 

I understand there are two frimware files needed please send both. Thanks!

[Rattle]

i am using a 250gb diamondmax10 for a storage drive and it would dissapear on me occasionally, my firmware was BANC 1980

 

I called them they sent me out a new drive with new firmware, problem go bye bye, maxtor rules....