Are Maxtor drives bad???

[tmodel37]

I have what looks to be 2 bad maxtor drives. Is this possible? Both are brand new just out of the box. Windows will install and load ok, and reboots just fine, but when I load the drivers from the Asus disk, or the SP2 upgrade, or any other file, it won't boot. Gives me various corruted file errors. After loading WinXP Pro numerous times on both drives I've concluded the drives have a definite problem. I have used SATA port 1 on all installs.

Anyone have any input ? Opinions?

This is the first time I've ever had a problem with Mator drives, used them for years!
I should mention that the drives in question are 200 GB SATA drives, mod. #6L200SO .
But this is the first time I have ever used an SATA drive of any make.

System is as follows.(if I can remember)

My system as of now!

Case- Antec SLK2650-BQE(A bit tight)
PSU- Antec 550W True Power 2.0
MB- A8N32 SLI Deluxe
CPU- AMD 64X2 4800 W/stock cooler
RAM- 2 GB Corsair TwinX2048-3500LLPro
HD- 2 Maxtor SATA 200 GB and 1- 74 GB WD Rapter
Floppy
DVD- Sony
CDRom

Also I might add that I have since started the system up on the Rapter drive with no problems at all, using the exact same procedure as the Maxtors. And no, I did not press F6 on any of the installs, why would that be neccessary? It wasn't needed for the Raptor drive. I dont want to raid the drives as yet. Could WinXP Pro not have the proper drivers? And if not, where do I get them?
Somebody help!!!

 

[Bozo Galora]

its not the drives, its you
do not load any nforce chipset drivers - none - do not even think about it.
check all drivers tabs in dev man for sata and ide - they all better say MS

and you DO have to press F6 and go to floppy since you are updating to SP2 AFTER install
SATA RAID Is also SATA (very confusing)
The SATA drivers are on your mobo CD with a .exe to load them to floppy
And you will not have large drive support with XP Pro until after your SP2 install, then you may have to manually turn on 48 bit in registry

SLIPSTREAM the damn SP2 into your XP CD
http://flexbeta.net/slipstreamerxp/

 

[DBSX]

its not the drives, its you
do not load any nforce chipset drivers - none - do not even think about it.
check all drivers tabs in dev man for sata and ide - they all better say MS

It's not him. There have been several documented cases of Maxtor SATA drives not working correctly with various Asus boards. Check the Asus forums for solutions.

and you DO have to press F6 and go to floppy since you are updating to SP2 AFTER install
SATA RAID Is also SATA (very confusing)

He said he does not want to do RAID (at least at this time), so there is no need to press F6.

The SATA drivers are on your mobo CD with a .exe to load them to floppy
And you will not have large drive support with XP Pro until after your SP2 install, then you may have to manually turn on 48 bit in registry

Unless he is installing SP1 version of Windows, which we don't kow.

SLIPSTREAM the damn SP2 into your XP CD
http://flexbeta.net/slipstreamerxp/

Awesome idea.

\Dan

 

[Bozo Galora]

nothing you said in counterpoint is a fact, upon consideration he has sucessfully installed XP Pro on both drives several times
however, from my computer forum experience, I know that "point by point" refuters by nature will argue and argue until the cows come home - so I therefore defer to your obvious superior knowledge and think OP should follow your advice - RMA both the drives, or get a dif brand mobo - LOL

 

[3chordcharlie]

Yes, maxtor drives are specifically designed to not work.

It's a very weird business decision if you ask me

 

[stevty2889]

Does you windows install CD have at least SP1? If not that is part of the problem, since the original XP prior to SP1 was unable to recognize above 130gb. What happens if you install windows to the raptor, install SP2, and then install the maxtor drives? Are they recognized and function properly?

 

[DBSX]

nothing you said in counterpoint is a fact, upon consideration he has sucessfully installed XP Pro on both drives several times

It's not him. There have been several documented cases of Maxtor SATA drives not working correctly with various Asus boards. Check the Asus forums for solutions.

Fact

He said he does not want to do RAID (at least at this time), so there is no need to press F6.

Fact. This was said, explicitly in the original post.

And it is also a fact that we don't know if XP SP1 is being used, unless you have powers that I lack (ie; mind reading, spying on specific posters, etc).

I will admit I was mistaken in saying it's not the drives. At least entirely, the drives themselves are just fine. They simply have compatibility issues with the chipset being used here.

I guess Maxtor needed to present this information just for kicks, not because there is an actual, factual problem...

\Dan

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: DBSX

There have been several documented cases of Maxtor SATA drives not working correctly with various Asus boards. Check the Asus forums for solutions.

Could it be that Seagate paid some forum trolls to go to the Asus forums to drive down the price of Maxtor? Are any of them here?

Some specifics would help here. I looked in the Asus forums for awhile, but didn't really find much that would back up such a generalization, and nothing specific about incompatibility. Moreover, if there were specific incompatiblity problems, I'd expect them to be detailed by Asus and/or Maxtor, and not just forum posters. However, I'd love to know about such specific incompatibliity problems, and would just need clearer directions to find them.

I've installed a dozen or so Maxtor drives in the recent past, in XP, Asus, Nvidia drivers, SATA RAID, boot on RAID, etc., and have yet to see anything indicating a specific Maxtor / Asus problem.

Maxtor has downloadable utilities for checking your drives. If you're going to try to RMA them, you should probably run them.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: DBSX
Fact

Thanks for the link; hadn't seen that before posting.

However, that article refers specifically to a SATA II/3.0 Gb/s drive, which the OP doesn't have. Moreover, I have a Maxtor SATA 3.0 Gb/s "3V" drive, and used it with NForce4 under Asus, and I haven't seen that problem; it's possible that I got one with a fixed firmware, or have been just lucky so far.

 

[LiquidImpulse]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
Yes, maxtor drives are specifically designed to not work.

It's a very weird business decision if you ask me

 

[DBSX]

The article mentions a few specific drives, but I know of others who've had drives not mentioned that had troubles. Also I know people too that have the "affected" drives with nForce 4 chipsets (not just Asus, I mentioned Asus only because I just got an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe recently and I saw this issue mentioned a lot in my research for the board - I didn't mean to imply only Asus boards are affected).

I think the bottom line is that it's more likey than not that the drives are probably fine and that the compatibility problem may be larger than Maxtor reported in the linked article. It is possible the drives are bad, but I thinks that's pretty unlikely that two drives are bad right from the box. Before blaming bad drives, I'd look into other issues, but of course use Maxtor's tools to check the drives and be sure. If they are bad, RMA them.

\Dan