Another clicking Maxtor - Hardware reset?
Hi All,
Having seen a few horrible looking and sounding (and failed) Maxtor hard drives over the years, I had stayed away from them for a long time. At least the outer finish of the Maxtors seem to have improved over the last few years, but I still doubt the inside. Anyway, now a friend has a Maxtor 40GB Fireball 3 ATA/133 HDD, date code 30Nov2003, that has failed after very light use in a little over an year. This one came installed in Maxtor's own USB external enclosure, which doen't seem to provide sufficient cooling anyway.
This Maxtor drive spins, but makes that notorious clicking sound, "The Sound of Maxtor", as the drive fails to read its own hardware boot code. So the BIOS wouldn't completely recognize the drive, and Windows or DOS wouldn't see it. As I've read elsewhere, this "clicking sound" problem may be caused by electronic component failure, head block failure, or bad surface.
While we don't hope to recover any data from it, or expect to put it back to reliable use again, I'm wondering if there's anything experimental that can be done on this hard drive, particularly in the following regard:
So the heads can't read it's original bootcode (service track). The drive may be locked in this task, in order to safeguard prior data. In the present case, when we are not interested in the integrity of prior (or, for that matter, future-) data, would it be possible (say by using the test points and unmarked jumpers on the circuit board) to reset the drive, and possibly to get it to try to re-write the tracks or to plainly ignore the errors and go on.
As I've heard, true "low-level formatting" is not possible to do by software with IDE (ATA) drives. So, here I'm wondering if something similar (and experimental) could be forced with simple hardware tricks.
Would be glad to hear if anyone wishes to share any advice and experience. Thanks in advance.
-vj
ps. I know that this may be a long-shot; just trying to inspire!
Having seen a few horrible looking and sounding (and failed) Maxtor hard drives over the years, I had stayed away from them for a long time. At least the outer finish of the Maxtors seem to have improved over the last few years, but I still doubt the inside. Anyway, now a friend has a Maxtor 40GB Fireball 3 ATA/133 HDD, date code 30Nov2003, that has failed after very light use in a little over an year. This one came installed in Maxtor's own USB external enclosure, which doen't seem to provide sufficient cooling anyway.
This Maxtor drive spins, but makes that notorious clicking sound, "The Sound of Maxtor", as the drive fails to read its own hardware boot code. So the BIOS wouldn't completely recognize the drive, and Windows or DOS wouldn't see it. As I've read elsewhere, this "clicking sound" problem may be caused by electronic component failure, head block failure, or bad surface.
While we don't hope to recover any data from it, or expect to put it back to reliable use again, I'm wondering if there's anything experimental that can be done on this hard drive, particularly in the following regard:
So the heads can't read it's original bootcode (service track). The drive may be locked in this task, in order to safeguard prior data. In the present case, when we are not interested in the integrity of prior (or, for that matter, future-) data, would it be possible (say by using the test points and unmarked jumpers on the circuit board) to reset the drive, and possibly to get it to try to re-write the tracks or to plainly ignore the errors and go on.
As I've heard, true "low-level formatting" is not possible to do by software with IDE (ATA) drives. So, here I'm wondering if something similar (and experimental) could be forced with simple hardware tricks.
Would be glad to hear if anyone wishes to share any advice and experience. Thanks in advance.
-vj
ps. I know that this may be a long-shot; just trying to inspire!
0
Comments
IBM DeskStars get stuck in park way more then maxtors anyways.
If your drives failing dont waste time with it just replace it unless you need to recover data off.
If the bios isn't seeing the drive the logic boards damaged.
edit: Btw ive had more maxtors die then I can count (However there rma department is very good). Western Digital has been the most relieable drive for me second most relieable is seagate. For future buying of harddrives avoid samsung and trigem both brands are less relieable then even maxtor.(I don't think too many people will disagree with me on that one)