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maxtor - registering as N40P

I have a Maxtor 40 gig drive that suddenly started registering in BIOS as N40P instead of the normal Maxtor designation. Any way I can fix this as the drive is now inaccessible.

SOLUTION

jamietoner

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Line One

ASKER

I Googled prior to posting here and the results were overwhelming that it was not a hardware problem/PCB problem but a firmware problem. However, how to resolve it was not clear. I was hoping someone here had this experience and knew how to resolve it.

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Callandor

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SOLUTION

johnb6767

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wyliecoyoteuk

You could try this:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Maxtor-Firmware-Repairer-Floppy-disk-version.shtml

Says that the demo version will repair one model, not sure if that means one disk, if so, that's all you need.
The full version is $400

Callandor

Exactly the same software that I linked to - mine was the CDROM version ;-)

Line One

ASKER

Thanks for all the tips.

Other drives including identical Maxtors work ok with this computer.

I will try the Maxtor utility/others and report back.

Line One

ASKER

Sorry to have let this go for this long. Hopefully I will get to this over the weekend.

Line One

ASKER

The demo software only works with one type of Maxtor drive and it's not the kind I have and I don't want to fork out $400.00 for this situation - a data recovery place could do it for that with a guarantee of sorts. If the software doesn't work I doubt I'll get my money back.