Author Topic: Maxtor hard drive problems (Read 388 times)

daddog · « **on:** August 21, 2005, 11:18:42 AM »

Trying to install a new 250gig Maxtor SATA HD. # 6L250S0

Problem is about ½ my drive is used yet there is nothing on the drive but a fresh version of XP Pro. If I recall it was about 116 gigs used, but there is nothing there. This is after I installed XP on it.

I spent all night downloading the “mxblst4cd”. Dial up here. Anyway, directions say to unzip it onto your desk top. It was a single file “Mxblst4.iso” file. I am supposed to double click on that file and it will use my recording software to make a bootable CD. When I double click on the .iso file it asks me what to open it with. I have no idea. So I just copied the “Mxblst4.iso” file onto a DVD, unzipped of course. I have my system set to boot to the CD, but it just ignores the .iso DVD and boots into Windows. It is because it is a DVD? I only have a DVD burner on my system. If I put in my XP Pro CD it will boot to that.

I also tried downloading the Mxblst4 for windows which is a much smaller file. When I try to use that (in Windows) it tells me the drive is already the correct size.

At a loss here.

zmeg · « **Reply #1 on:** August 21, 2005, 11:28:45 AM »

Any hard drive over 137 gigs must be formated using an XP disk with sp1 or sp2 already on it. Although most drives will come with software for this purpose it doesn't always work.

daddog · « **Reply #2 on:** August 21, 2005, 11:28:59 AM »

I also downloaded the Big Drive Enabler
http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=1328
and it says “Support is currently enabled for the 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) for ATAPI disk drives. You do no need to run this registry update.”

What could be using 1/2 of my drive? Any ideas?

beet1e · « **Reply #3 on:** August 24, 2005, 03:52:48 AM »

daddog

I always use Maxtors, but my largest is only 120GB. Was that Big Drive Enabler no help at all?

The only time I've found that I could not access all of a drive was on a much older system. The problem was fixed by updating the BIOS. Check your mobo manual to see if there's a compatibility issue between mobo and large drives, and whether it can be fixed with a BIOS update - a bit of a long shot, but you never know...

Siaf__csf · « **Reply #4 on:** August 24, 2005, 04:39:47 AM »

If you have an old motherboard, you may not have hardware support for large drives.

Also if you copy the .iso file as a file to a dvd it won't boot. You need to burn it as disk image.

Schutt · « **Reply #5 on:** August 24, 2005, 05:49:39 AM »

I think if you have more than one hard disk in the system a double used partition letter could cause problems where you cant see one of the two partitions.

Also windows will not show partitions that it doesnt recognize and i understand you installed windowsxp on the harddisk. In the installation you might have formated the full drive when installing windows to it, as in you have now windowsxp in an empty partition where your data was before?

How big does windows xp drive manager list your hard drive, is all there or are you missing a big chunk?
Is a big chunk unformatted or is it totally missing as in the drive size is smaller than it should be?

If you find that your data is lost due to a reformat of the place where it was you might be able to recover parts of it. In that case i would strongly advise not using the hard disk at all and booting from another disk (or fit the hd in another system) where you have the recovery program installed.

To search a recovery program note that most have free versions where you can check if and what they would recover, but to retrieve the data you have to buy the full version.

I am not aware of any freeware recovery programms but there might be some, i just dont know where.