Second HD crashes

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G

Guest

My Dell Dimension 8400 seems to hate additional HDs.
I bought an extra internal HD Maxtor 300 GB, but it crashed two times and
was replaced.
Adding external HD´s as well made the Maxtor crash again (after working well
for half a year), and now I have installed my fourth Maxtor, but after moving
some files to the new Maxtor, it crashes when I try to do anything with the
files (except move them internal on the Maxtor). The system freezes för 30
seconds, the Maxtor disappears and a message that the $Mft is lost comes up.
Restarting the system sometimes makes the Maxtor come back with the files
visable. The files are mostly mp3s and MPEGs.
I do understand that Maxtor has a bad reputation, but I also beleive that
there´s something wrong with the XP that can´t handle multiple big disks.

Suggestions?

RViberg
 
You need to determine if your PC support 48Bit LBA (Large Drives).
Down load and install HD Tune: http://www.hdtune.com/
Once installed, start it and then click on the 'Info' tab. Then select the
drive of interest and see if 48-bit Address is checked in the 'Supported
Features' box. If it is not then your motherboard does not support large
drives.

JS
 
Well as I said the Maxtor worked well for half a year, so the system supports
Large drives. I also sometimes use a 1 TB Lacie.
RViberg
 
How many external devices are you connecting via usb?
and is this via a hub or direct to pc usb?
 
It may be that the power supply is under powered for the configuration that you want to use. Dell
normally uses a proprietary power supply so it may not be putting out enough juice, also they tend
to be very sparing on cooling with their cases so there might be a heat issue also.
 
Sorry I missread your post I thought you were refering to Maxtor external
drives.

It would seem to be, judgeing by the number of Maxtor drives that have been
problomatic, a specific Maxtor problem. Perhaps you should be contacting
Maxtor tech, maybe they have a firmware update.

Presumably also you checked Dell site for any bios/chipset driver updates
that may be relevent.
 
Hmm
Interesting. But why do the external drivs crash as well? And how do I solve
the power supply problem? The problem remains after the computer beeing shut
down for a while, so it isn´t the heat.
RViberg
 
Dell build there own hw so a generic uprated pwr supply may not fit.
But its also true that pwr supply probs/ low pwr can cause hd problems.
I dont believe you can test the pwr supply output without specialised
knowledge/tools
 
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