Maxtor hard drive parameters changed?

[jbclem]

I have a 40 GB DiamondMax Plus hard drive bought about 1 1/2 years ago. I just installed it a month ago and it ran fine until yesterday. Then when starting up the computer things got screwy and there were signs of a hard drive problem.

I ran Spinrite 5 and one of it's first screens told me that the hard drive parameters had changed and that the problem was probably something that Spinrite wouldn't fix. I went ahead and ran Spinrite, but it didn't find any bad spots on the hard drive.

Here are the parameters that Spinrite listed:

Original: Sectors : 63
Heads : 255
Cylinders: 903

Current: Sectors : 63
Heads : 255
Cylinders: 1024

You can see the cylinder number has changed. I went into my Phoenix Bios but it is not set up to change the parameters easily, and I'm not even sure that I can do that. This is an older computer, PII 350mHz. Phoenix Bios 4 Release 6.

Does anyone know if and how I can change the hard drive parameters, or even if is a feasible source of a problem.

jc

 

[kony]

I have a 40 GB DiamondMax Plus hard drive bought about 1 1/2 years ago.
I just installed it a month ago and it ran fine until yesterday. Then when
starting up the computer things got screwy and there were signs of a hard
drive problem.

What things got screwy? What were the signs

I ran Spinrite 5

.... don't. It isn't the HDD manufacturer's utility and has
no use here. Don't have it change anything.

and one of it's first screens told me that the hard drive parameters had
changed and that the problem was probably something that Spinrite
wouldn't fix. I went ahead and ran Spinrite, but it didn't find any bad
spots on the hard drive.

Here are the parameters that Spinrite listed:

Original: Sectors : 63
Heads : 255
Cylinders: 903

Current: Sectors : 63
Heads : 255
Cylinders: 1024

You can see the cylinder number has changed.

No, we can only see that Spinrite claims it used to be
different. In other words, quit using it and pretend you
never had, completely discard anything you think you know
from it's use and proceed to running the HDD manufacturer's
diagnostics.

It's possible the drive is merely overheating, some of the
Maxtor 40GB did get flaky when ran too hot, and would run
too hot just sitting out on a desk, if they weren't flipped
over with a fan pointed at them. Similarly in a case, their
circuit board should have a stream of airflow over it.
Maybe your drive wasn't overheating- this we cannot know,
but if that it a possibility, your only problem may be
keeping it cooler, and if the data is now corrupt, restoring
a backup and henceforth keeping it cooler (if the
manufacturer's diags don't show any signs of a problem).

However, it seems odd that this drive is only 1.5 years old,
it was several years ago that these were current generation
drives. Is it possible the drive is much older at this
point and it's time to replace it due to old age?

I went into my Phoenix Bios but it is not set up to change the
parameters easily, and I'm not even sure that I can do that.
This is an older computer, PII 350mHz. Phoenix Bios 4 Release 6.

Does anyone know if and how I can change the hard drive parameters, or even if is a feasible source of a problem.

Do not change anything in the bios re: HDD parameters. They
should remain the same as they had been, and had worked up
until now. The bios should remain set to "auto" or the
equivalent setting if worded differently. Perhaps your
system's bios didn't support drives over 8 or 32GB and the
result was a DDO, drive overlay being installed to the
drive? Regardless, you need to boot that drive, not a
separate drive or floppy to load the DDO for the drive
parameter translation.

You might see if there's a more recent bios for that
motherboard, perhaps it can support a 40GB HDD natively.

We can't be sure yet whether there is even anything wrong
with the drive as we don't have a better description of
eactly what had gone wrong initially. Something like a
failing PSU could interfere with the system booting an OS
due to being too instable, or a CPU fan failure if the
system wasn't cold/off when the attempt to boot was made-
but certainly if the system had been cold it would not have
overheated before the OS had time to load.

Run the Maxtor diagnostics, they're available from their
website if you don't have a copy.

 

[CBFalconer]

Part 1.1 Type: Plain Text (text/plain)
Encoding: quoted-printable

Please don't use html or mime-types in usenet. They are a security
risk. Ignored.

 

[jbclem]

I don't remember exactly what was screwy, that's why I used that term (this
was before Xmas), but I do remember rebooting my Win2000 computer and chkdsk
running for a long time and making many corrections. Since then I've run
Spinrite, HDD regenerator, and the Maxtor diagnostic disk, and none of them
have found anything wrong other than noting a couple of bad spots were
marked.

There were no signs of a hot hard drive, the computer is in a cold basement
area, and I never noticed a smell (the sides are off the computer case), but
I suppose that's possible.

Since the hard drive ran for 1-2 months and was using the entire 40GB, I
assume that the bios is supporting it's size (or possibly the installation
disk added an overlay).

This hard drive was bought on sale at Fry's, it may have been old stock or
an older model...but what difference does that make? Are you saying that a
hard drive should be thrown away because it's 3 years old? What would make
such an ancient drive go bad?

Right now the problem is that parts of Windows 2000 are not functioning, I'm
getting error messages that certain drivers are not present or non
functional. I've reinstalled some of the drivers but still have the same
problems (network, cd-rom, and others). I was using Win2000 sp4, and when
this happened I ran the original installation disk and chose repair. I'm
wondering if it overwrote newer drivers and caused some of the problems
(Win2000 takes forever to boot up, tries to restore network connection and
failed, cd-rom just won't install properly).

Without the use of network and cd-rom I can't even reinstall the OS. I'm
going to try to set up the MS-Dos CD-rom drivers and see if I can go in that
way and reinstall the OS.

That's where it stands right now, thanks for steering me to the Maxtor
diagnostic, that at least got me pointed in the right direction.

jc

What things got screwy? What were the signs




... don't. It isn't the HDD manufacturer's utility and has
no use here. Don't have it change anything.



No, we can only see that Spinrite claims it used to be
different. In other words, quit using it and pretend you
never had, completely discard anything you think you know
from it's use and proceed to running the HDD manufacturer's
diagnostics.

It's possible the drive is merely overheating, some of the
Maxtor 40GB did get flaky when ran too hot, and would run
too hot just sitting out on a desk, if they weren't flipped
over with a fan pointed at them. Similarly in a case, their
circuit board should have a stream of airflow over it.
Maybe your drive wasn't overheating- this we cannot know,
but if that it a possibility, your only problem may be
keeping it cooler, and if the data is now corrupt, restoring
a backup and henceforth keeping it cooler (if the
manufacturer's diags don't show any signs of a problem).

However, it seems odd that this drive is only 1.5 years old,
it was several years ago that these were current generation
drives. Is it possible the drive is much older at this
point and it's time to replace it due to old age?

even if is a feasible source of a problem.

 

[kony]

Since the hard drive ran for 1-2 months and was using the entire 40GB, I
assume that the bios is supporting it's size (or possibly the installation
disk added an overlay).

If you used the Maxtor software (or another HDD
manufacturer's program, "Maybe") it may have installed an
overlay. If you didn't, it wouldn't have one.

This hard drive was bought on sale at Fry's, it may have been old stock or
an older model...but what difference does that make? Are you saying that a
hard drive should be thrown away because it's 3 years old? What would make
such an ancient drive go bad?

I was suggesting that if the drive is really 4+ years old it
has a lot more wear on it (depending on the use) and it
could be prudent to replace it. If it was really only 1.5
years old, old stock, it should've had plenty of life left.

Right now the problem is that parts of Windows 2000 are not functioning, I'm
getting error messages that certain drivers are not present or non
functional. I've reinstalled some of the drivers but still have the same
problems (network, cd-rom, and others). I was using Win2000 sp4, and when
this happened I ran the original installation disk and chose repair. I'm
wondering if it overwrote newer drivers and caused some of the problems
(Win2000 takes forever to boot up, tries to restore network connection and
failed, cd-rom just won't install properly).

Based on this, it is not clear to me that it is a hard drive
problem rather than a Windows problem. I'd check the system
for memory errors (Memtest86+), boot to safe mode and try
removing drivers, see if you can get it to boot without
drivers first. Some things like CDROM don't need addt'l
drivers, I'm now wondering if you have a different hardware
fault if windows otherwise runs, perhaps motherboard or PSU
failing.

Without the use of network and cd-rom I can't even reinstall the OS. I'm
going to try to set up the MS-Dos CD-rom drivers and see if I can go in that
way and reinstall the OS.

Boot the system to a DOS boot disk with CDROM support to see
if the CDROM can then be accessed, or did you mean a known
good Windows (original) CD can't even boot? This would be
under the assumption that the system used to be able to boot
it.

That's where it stands right now, thanks for steering me to the Maxtor
diagnostic, that at least got me pointed in the right direction.

It might be a silly question but are you sure you had the
correct drivers for Windows? Some things like the CDROM,
might've failed... we don't know how often you use this
system and thus, how long it might've ran in the location
before a failure mode significant enough to notice would be.

 

[jbclem]

This Maxtor hard drive had been kept as a spare, and was literally taken out
of the box 1-2 months ago...it is essentially brand new. It think that what
ever problem happened, that produced all the chkdsk results, has cleared
itself but left behind alot of problems that haven't been fixed. BTW, this
hard drive and Windows2000 had been working perfectly normally for a month
or two until this problem occured, and I use this computer almost everyday.

I was about to try some of your suggestions but in looking around I found
that alot of the essential Services (Administrative Tools), such as DHCP
Client, and Net Logon, were "stopped". I tried to restart some of them and
received the error message "error 1068: the dependency service or group
failed to start". I know this is a hardware newsgroup but if this error
message makes any sense and you can give me a direction to go, I'd
appreciate it. This could explain why my network won't connect and a bunch
of other problems (also possible the CD-ROM problem). I'm going to see if I
can track a solution down via google.

jc

 

[kony]

This Maxtor hard drive had been kept as a spare, and was literally taken out
of the box 1-2 months ago...it is essentially brand new. It think that what
ever problem happened, that produced all the chkdsk results, has cleared
itself but left behind alot of problems that haven't been fixed. BTW, this
hard drive and Windows2000 had been working perfectly normally for a month
or two until this problem occured, and I use this computer almost everyday.

I was about to try some of your suggestions but in looking around I found
that alot of the essential Services (Administrative Tools), such as DHCP
Client, and Net Logon, were "stopped". I tried to restart some of them and
received the error message "error 1068: the dependency service or group
failed to start". I know this is a hardware newsgroup but if this error
message makes any sense and you can give me a direction to go, I'd
appreciate it. This could explain why my network won't connect and a bunch
of other problems (also possible the CD-ROM problem). I'm going to see if I
can track a solution down via google.

If you have essential services stopped, yes that can cause
windows problems.

Some services require other services, you can right-click
and check their dependencies. If that doesn't reveal what
else needs running, you might Google search for a Windows
(2K still?) services guide which should list them all and
the suggested setting.

 

[jbclem]

Here's the solution to the main problem, network not connecting. In
searching through Services, I discovered that the DHCP Client was stopped,
and couldn't be started. Trying to start it produced an error message
referring to dependencies and groups that weren't right, and an error #1068.
Researching that found the information that when you uninstall a Symantic
Norton Antivirus, it deletes a file called SYMTDI.sys and doesn't remove the
registry entries associated with it. Unfortunately some of those registry
entries create a dependency to DHCP and NetBios. I went through the
registry and elminated the appropriate entries and after a reboot, my
network connection was made and I have access again to the internet from
this computer. Also, the computer boots up much quicker now. BTW, I
normally use NAV 2003, and had uninstalled it with no problems. But I
recently tried NAV 2005 and then uninstalled it, so I'll bet that caused the
problem. Good old Norton Anti-Virus, the class of it's lot!

A few more problems to solve, the most important is getting my CD-ROM to
work, and I'm following an error message #31 for that.

jc

 

[kony]

Here's the solution to the main problem, network not connecting. In
searching through Services, I discovered that the DHCP Client was stopped,
and couldn't be started. Trying to start it produced an error message
referring to dependencies and groups that weren't right, and an error #1068.
Researching that found the information that when you uninstall a Symantic
Norton Antivirus, it deletes a file called SYMTDI.sys and doesn't remove the
registry entries associated with it. Unfortunately some of those registry
entries create a dependency to DHCP and NetBios. I went through the
registry and elminated the appropriate entries and after a reboot, my
network connection was made and I have access again to the internet from
this computer. Also, the computer boots up much quicker now. BTW, I
normally use NAV 2003, and had uninstalled it with no problems. But I
recently tried NAV 2005 and then uninstalled it, so I'll bet that caused the
problem. Good old Norton Anti-Virus, the class of it's lot!

A few more problems to solve, the most important is getting my CD-ROM to
work, and I'm following an error message #31 for that.

jc

Good to see you have sorted this out, and thank you for
posting the solution.

These kinds of bugs are one of the reasons I try to avoid
Norton/Symantec (and McAfee) products.

 

[Joel]

These kinds of bugs are one of the reasons I try to avoid
Norton/Symantec (and McAfee) products.

Same here, I started using Norton product in around early or mid 80's, and
stopped using it some months after started using Win95 Pre-released whichI
found out it caused so much problem (it started messing up with other apsby
using the same name, replacing others' with theirs etc.)

Same with McAfee, I have stopped using McAfee product for many years. I
also stopped using Spam-Killer after it sold to McAfee when they started
adding bunch of junks to my system, messing up the program etc..