Maxtor DiamondMax21 200 GB Internal HD will not Boot--Help!

[jdawg123]

I am running Windows XP Professional. About 4 months ago I installed this Maxtor drive. It says on the lable, Maxtor DiamondMax21, 200 GB PATA.

The drive gave no signal it was about to fault. No strange behavior, no strange sounds, etc.

I powered up my computer and I get a fault that states someting like "Primary Hard Drive 0 not found, press ctrl-alt-dlt to restart"

I have already gone through the BIOS set-up and everything looks cool. So, in a last ditch effort, I re-connected my old hard drive and I connected this faulty Maxtor as a secondary. Well, I can access the files that are on the Maxtor.

My question is what can I do to recover the Maxtor as my primary drive and not lose any of the data?

I am getting by on my old drive since it has not been in use for only about 4 months it has not been that bad, but I need the Maxtor 200 GB drive.

Any help, hints, or advice will be appreciated.

[chauffeur2]

Hello jdawg123, Welcome to TSF!

This might sound strange/stupid but...Did you make sure that the Maxtor Diamond HDD is 'pinned' as a "Master" Drive?

Going by what you have said I think that it might be 'pinned' as a "Slave".

At the rear of the Drive between the white plastic molex power plug and the IDE Ribbon, there are 8 pins; you probably have a small jumper pin across two of these pins, this needs to be removed for the Drive to be recognised as "Master".

Check this out and post back with the results.

Kind Regards,

[jdawg123]

In the original configuration, which is where I want to get, the Maxtor 200 GB was running as a single hard set up as "cable select." It ran this way for the approx. 4 months before this fault began to occur.

In my efforts to trouble shoot it, I removed the problematic Maxtor and put my old 20 GB Western Digital in its place using the same cable and power supply connection that was on the Maxtor. The Western Digital runs fine, thank goodness, or I'd be dead in the water now.

The Maxtor is now on my system as the E: drive, and I just did this to verify that I could access files--which I can.

So, the current config is like this:

A: is a floppy
C: is my old internal Western Digital 20 GB
D: is my CD/RW
E: is my Maxtor DiamondMax21 200GB

I am trying to get back to this configuration (without losing any data):
A: floppy
C: Maxtor DiamondMax21 200GB
D: CD/RW

[chauffeur2]

Did you try the Maxtor without any jumper pins?

As the only HDD.

It also will need to be connected to the end connector of the IDE Ribbon too.

Regards,

[jdawg123]

ok, I just tried it like this--

First I removed my old working Western Digital 20 GB drive.

I connected the faulty Maxtor to the end of the ribbon cable and rmoved the jumper. I wnet through the BIOS set-up and it was detected as Secondary Slave. I pressed "Y" to save the settings and at the black screen where you would expect Windows XP to start it remains black and states;
"Searching for boot record from IDE-0..OK"
"A disk read error occurred."
"Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart."

--------------------------------
So, in order to sign back on and post this reply, I had to re-install the old Western Digital 20 GB drive on the end of the IDE cable and put the jumper back to the cable select setting and put it on the grey middle IDE connector. Again, I had to go to BIOS set-up where my old Western Digital is now the Secondary Master and the faulty Maxtor is the Sec. Slave.

I just can not figure out why my Maxtor will not boot.

[chauffeur2]

Hi again,

Sorry for the delayed reply...

There is a strong suspicion that this Maxtor HDD might be faulty; so, I suggest that you download the diagnostic utility tool from here; run it on the 'faulty' drive. (Click the coloured link.)

Post back with the results.

Kind Regards,

[Deleted090308]

You should have the Maxtor hooked up as Primary Master.

[jdawg123]

Alright David T., I just finished running the Seagate diagnostic drive tests and here are the results.

Short Generic = Pass
Long Generic = Pass

Short Drive Self Test = Fail
Long Drive Self Test = Fail

What does that tell us?

[chauffeur2]

G'Day, jdawg123,

Originally Posted by jdawg123

Alright David T., I just finished running the Seagate diagnostic drive tests and here are the results.

Short Generic = Pass
Long Generic = Pass
This is ok

Short Drive Self Test = Fail
Long Drive Self Test = Fail
Just as it says "Fail"

What does that tell us?

This Drive is about to "Spit the Dummy"; If I were you, I would be retrieving whatever data that is on this Drive to either another Drive or other media.

If this Drive is still under the manufacturer's warranty you should return it for a warranty exchange (RMA).

The diagnostic test has proven that the HDD is faulty; hence, your problems.

Sorry the news is not better.

Kind Regards,