SATA hard disk drop out

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grei Stokes
  • Start date Start date
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Grei Stokes

I have 2 x maxtor 160gb SATA drives on my computer (ECS PF1 mobo, P4 2.4 HS
800FSB, 1gb RAM, RADEON 9200). The problem is when writing to either drive
they drop out, I lose them from MyComputer and Windows reports "unsafe
hardware removal".
I have updated the mobo to the latest bios, re-formatted the drives using
Maxtor's MaxBlast 3, re-installed a clean copy of Windows XP SP1 (I had to
buy cos pre-SP1 doesn't support 137+ HDDs) and still both drives drop out.
The computer supplier says it's a hard drive problem or Windows, the hard
drive supplier says it's the Mobo or Windows and Microsoft won't help cos
it's OEM.
Can anyone help? I currently have 320gb of hard drives that I can't use and
this has dragged on a month.
 
Maxtor is either lying or their support staff needs training !

I have Seagate SATA disks and they have no problems with
files a lot larger than 1Gig. (XP home edition, SP-1,
ASUS p4S8X motherboard.)

That said, there are at least two potential barriers you
MAY have crossed: (1) BIOS limit at 128 to 137 Gig. (2)
XP limit at same.

Check with your motherboard manufacture whether it can
handle such a large disk, or whether there is a BIOS
upgrade available.

As for the XP limitation, it can be fixed by installing SP-
1 and turning on LBA support.

One other thought, if the partition to which you are
writing is FAT32, then the bigest single file is 4 Gig.
If it is NTFS there is no limit, except the available
space.

Finally, I have read a fair number of posts by folks on
this and other forums having problems with Matrox SATA
disks. Too bad, Maxtor used to make good IDE disks.
 
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