Problems with Maxtor 7L300S0

[whoeveryouare]

I installed a new Maxtor 7L300S0 a couple weeks ago. This is one of the MaxLine III drives (here is a link to the PDF doc for this drive). I have a couple questions, and I'd greatly appreciate it if someone more knowledgable than me could provide some explanation.

Some background: The 7L300S0 replaced a Western Digital WD2000JB drive (more accurately, it relegated it to a spot as my secondary drive). My board is an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe. The 7L300S0 is the first SATA drive I've ever had, and it's the first time I've hooked anything up to the SATA ports on the board.


1. On paper, the 7L300S0 is faster than the WD2000JB. But in actuality, I notice some things are much slower now. Saving simple text files in UltraEdit, for example, presents a noticable delay before the process is complete. (It's only about a second, but previously, it would have been nearly instantaneous.) Extracting archives is very noticably slower as well now, as opposed to how it was before.

• In Device Manager, the Silicon Image SATA controller shows that the drive is using "Ultra DMA mode 6". So it's not that I'm using PIO mode.
  
• Not everything is obviously slower. General use of the system is such that I wouldn't notice a difference. It's just when I do something file-intensive that presents a progress dialog, I can clearly tell it's taking longer than it used to.
  
• I'm using the latest WHQL drivers for the SATA controller.

The Question: Why are at least some file operations slower now than they were with the "slower" drive?


2. The 7L300S0 has one issue that really bothers me: Sometimes, it fails to report S.M.A.R.T. information, including its temperature value, to software that requests it. In fact, when I defrag a partition on the drive under Windows XP, I can't query its S.M.A.R.T. status at all, nor obtain its current temperature. If I stop the defrag, the query succeeds.

When I asked them, Maxtor's first-level support responded by saying they "don't think it's a problem with the drive itself". And of course, they told me to run their PowerMax utility on it. The drive passes the PowerMax basic test, and all the Advanced tests that precede the full scan. (I see no need to run a full surface scan on the drive, especially since my mainboard doesn't provide UDMA support natively. I have, however, scanned the surface using HD Tune, and no errors were found.)

The Question: Is this normal, or do I need to RMA this drive?

 

[whoeveryouare]

I'll make my own guesses...

1. Probably due to a crappy SATA controller (or crappy controller firmware) on the A7N8X-E Deluxe board.

2. Ditto. Probably due to a crappy SATA controller (or crappy controller firmware) on the A7N8X-E Deluxe board. I did an RMA on the drive, and the replacement drive does the same exact thing with the S.M.A.R.T. status. I find it hard to believe that this problem wouldn't have been known to Maxtor. But then again... Why wouldn't it also be known to Asus?

Thanks for the ... uh... help.

 

[Bateluer]

I think you are right, that board is from when SATA controllers were just beginning to proliferate on the market. Possibly a BIOS update or updated drivers may resolve the issue.

However, it is a Maxtor hard drive. Maxtor's and I have a rather negative history, and to sum it up, I'm never buying one of their products again.

 

[whoeveryouare]

Thanks. I am running the very latest BIOS and drivers, though, so it looks like there's no hope in the department.

I may be joining you with regard to Maxtor. After three weeks, I'm still fighting with the bastards to give me the 5-year warranty the drive was advertised as having.

 

[CraigRT]

I'd say it's a possible BIOS issue as well based on symptoms, very plausible. But I will also jump on the wagon and put forward my feelings for maxtor... They are the VERY last brand I would EVER trust with any files in any of my systems, period.

I've had NOTHING but problems with any single maxtor drive I've ever owned, and I'll never buy one again.

you should read about the Diamond Max 8, 30 and 40 gig drives... what a piece of junk (I had tons of these at work)

 

[Arcanedeath]

The only Maxtor drives I've had good luck with are the 40GB D740X-L drives it was actualy a quantum design and their first drive put out under maxtors aegis once they were purchased. then again my brother hasn't had any issues w/ his 200gb 8meg buffer DM 8+, but I've got some friends who have some horror stories about maxtor drives, mostly dm +9's and later though.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
The only Maxtor drives I've had good luck with are the 40GB D740X-L drives it was actualy a quantum design and their first drive put out under maxtors aegis once they were purchased. then again my brother hasn't had any issues w/ his 200gb 8meg buffer DM 8+, but I've got some friends who have some horror stories about maxtor drives, mostly dm +9's and later though.

All diamondmax 8 drives are 40GB and less, and are single platter half thickness drives. The 200GIG drive he had must have been a 9+. Anyways, the 8's are utter junk.

 

[whoeveryouare]

I just lost a bunch of text... Tip: Don't hit Tab and Enter really quickly from the "Quick Reply" box. The focus does NOT go to the Reply button, as you might expect if you are not hyped up on crack.

Without retyping the whole thing: Now I regret getting this drive. I think I know why they're trying to screw people out of the last 2 years of warranty for these drives. Just look at customer reviews on sites like Newegg.com--it isn't just me. (Though most people don't seem to mind getting screwed, or don't realize when they have been.)

 

[whoeveryouare]

Regarding problem number 1 from the original post in this thread (slowness writing to the SATA drive with that drive connected to the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe board):

Can I please have opinions on whether or not a PCI card like this would boost performance, if I moved the drive over to it?

 

[Mem]

Can I please have opinions on whether or not a PCI card like this would boost performance, if I moved the drive over to it?

Worth a shot IMHO,plus always handy to have around for the future and for testing etc...also try a different SATA cable too nothing to lose.
FYI I find my Maxtor Maxline 300GB fast in my Epox 9NPA+ Ultra board however it is new and does support latest SATA2 standard too.

 

[whoeveryouare]

Just in case someone is interested...


I bought and installed a Promise SATA300 TX2plus card, and connected the 7L300S0 to it. According to the benchmarks of HD Tune, the drive performs exactly the same in Windows XP as it did when connected to the mainboard, except that the burst rate is about 7-MB slower now (which isn't enough for me to worry about). (Note: I did install the Promise Disk Controller Manager software, and enable NCQ, before testing.)

HD Tune benchmark with drive connected to Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
HD Tune benchmark with drive connected to Promise SATA300 TX2plus


As far as the original performance problem... It wasn't the drive, nor the board, at all. It was Executive Software's Undelete service, which I had installed. The reason this blew right by me for so long is that I had been using Undelete for a long time, and never noticed such a slowdown with it installed and running. Why it suddenly started killing my write performance, coincident to when I installed the 7L300S0, is a mystery to me. (** See the Edit below)

Yes, it would have been nice to know that it was a software problem before plunking down $62 for the Promise card. But I'm keeping it anyway, since the performance in BootIt NG is much better now. I've no idea why, but it is markedly better.

Thanks to all who responded. It has been ... an education.

** Edit: It's no longer a mystery! I went without using Undelete for weeks, until finally reinstalling it last night. Then, I played around with it, hoping that I could find out why my performance has mysteriously degraded. As it turns out, I had enabled too many file extensions on the Versions tab under Recovery Bin Properties. The worst one to have in that list, as it turned out, was .TXT. When I simply removed .TXT from that Versions list, my performance improved greatly (during file system operations that had been previously affected). My assumption is thus: For any file matching a file extension on the Versions list, Undelete must create a backup copy of that file immediately upon creation, and each time the file is changed on disk. This is how it maintains a version history. So, it's no mystery that extracting archives with a lot of .TXT files would be dramatically slower with the .TXT extension on ths list!