burrn
asked on
Maxtor Hard drive problem
Here is the problem, sometimes when I power-up my PC and the BIOS starts to check for a HD and I could hear a mechanical noise coming from the HD. When that happens the detection fails and I get a black screen saying OS not found. So when I turn the PC off and restarted somtimes it does the same thing and other times it starts fine. Any help would be great.
Thanks,
VT
Is the hard drive making a lot of noise. It might be failing slowly on you.
How old is this drive?
Back up now, as this is an impending drive failure. If you think your drive may be under warranty, download Maxtor's Powermax diagnostic software and follow instruction as you will need the Dx codes to get an RMA from Maxtor. They are very good at replacing faulty drives if you follow their rules. T
I have a maxtor 30 gig 7200 rpm drive. A few weeks ago it crashed and seemed to follow a similar pattern as yours. It seemed as though it would power on much later on during the boot process than it normally should. At one point, it eventually stopped booting all together.
I looked at it in fdisk and no partition table was found, I was able to restore the primary active partition but could not load anything into it or read it through the command prompt in DOS. I repartitioned and formatted the drive, then installed Windows once again and it now seems to run just as well as before.
Using the Powermax utilities is also good, if by chance your drive is developing bad sectors, the low level format will be able to mark those portions of the drive and prevent them from being used. Be warned though, people have said to me that it should only be used as a final resort solution. I had disk errors/bad sectors (long before this rececnt crash) once but this format saved the drive from the garbage bin.
If you are currently running the drive now in your system, you can go to this link for online testing of your drive. This program will access the hard drive's S.M.A.R.T. ability and tell you if it is failing, I recommend also running the downloadable utility as well to ensure as much of a thorough check as possible.
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
You may have to use Internet Explorer to run the online tool because my Netscape does not support the plug in.
I looked at it in fdisk and no partition table was found, I was able to restore the primary active partition but could not load anything into it or read it through the command prompt in DOS. I repartitioned and formatted the drive, then installed Windows once again and it now seems to run just as well as before.
Using the Powermax utilities is also good, if by chance your drive is developing bad sectors, the low level format will be able to mark those portions of the drive and prevent them from being used. Be warned though, people have said to me that it should only be used as a final resort solution. I had disk errors/bad sectors (long before this rececnt crash) once but this format saved the drive from the garbage bin.
If you are currently running the drive now in your system, you can go to this link for online testing of your drive. This program will access the hard drive's S.M.A.R.T. ability and tell you if it is failing, I recommend also running the downloadable utility as well to ensure as much of a thorough check as possible.
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
You may have to use Internet Explorer to run the online tool because my Netscape does not support the plug in.
well, if there's no hope for your harddisk. do a low level format first. try if this could solve your problem. also try some "low level detect hardisk for failure". Try Disk manager or ontracks to do this. this will check if your harddisk may have develop a "Physical damage" or Reall adsector that cant be remove and say goodbye to your harddisk. If there's no error, then your harddisk is still ok. some bad sector can be remove if there's no physical deffects. probably mark by OS as bad sector.
DONT DO THIS IF YOU THINK YOUR HARDISK IS STILL OK and BACK UP DATA.
Anyway, whats your HDD? there are also a non destructive software that can detect "physical damage" to your harddisk. Go to the homepage of your HDD and check of Harddisk utility or maintenance too or diagnotic.
DONT DO THIS IF YOU THINK YOUR HARDISK IS STILL OK and BACK UP DATA.
Anyway, whats your HDD? there are also a non destructive software that can detect "physical damage" to your harddisk. Go to the homepage of your HDD and check of Harddisk utility or maintenance too or diagnotic.
check harddisk utility or diagnostic tools
I've had similar problems with Maxtor drives, even brand new ones. It's not necessarily a sign of impending drive failure.
Some machines just try to boot before the drive is spun up all the way.
Try going into your CMOS settings, and change the option for fast boot (or rapid boot, or express boot, or however it's worded in your particular machine) to "NO".
It won't try to boot until after it finishes the memory test, which will give the drive sufficient time to spin up.
--Greg
Some machines just try to boot before the drive is spun up all the way.
Try going into your CMOS settings, and change the option for fast boot (or rapid boot, or express boot, or however it's worded in your particular machine) to "NO".
It won't try to boot until after it finishes the memory test, which will give the drive sufficient time to spin up.
--Greg
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
burrn:
This old question needs to be finalized -- accept an answer, split points, or get a refund. For information on your options, please click here-> http:/help/closing.jsp#1
EXPERTS:
Post your closing recommendations! No comment means you don't care.
This old question needs to be finalized -- accept an answer, split points, or get a refund. For information on your options, please click here-> http:/help/closing.jsp#1
EXPERTS:
Post your closing recommendations! No comment means you don't care.