SATA Hard Drive help...

[~Rob]

Done a little more investigating and it seems rather than system hangs, the performance is just cripled when I connect this SATA drive. It took well over 10minutes at "setup is loading windows" and I gave up after 15minutes of "setup is examing HDD 0 on IDE 0....."
Boot up performance also seems to take a major hit with the IDE drive booting and the SATA just connected as D.

Anyone...

 

[ASSEMBLER]

did you have a o/s on your ide drive before you installed the sata drive if so on boot up it will still look for c drive and you will actualy have a bootable o/s on both drives and its confused this it why it wont boot correctly. i think you will find that if you format your ide drive so its clean then you should be able to boot sata drive fine.i had a similar problem like this only a few weeks ago and this solved the problem

 

[~Rob]

I've tried both with and without the IDE drive connected.

With it connected bootup is pathetically slow, but eventually the version of XP is loaded from the IDE drives install and the SATA drive is visible under windows. I actually used this method to Format the thing.

Without the IDE drive connected bootup is still just as slow. The only difference being XP setup runs so slow its impossible to entertain the idea of getting it installed this side of Christmas...lol

Come to think of it.. I havent done anything like a Scandisk on this SATA drive, so I'll get windows booted up with it visiible and see what happens. Its strange as on face value there doesnt seem to be anything obviously wrong with the drive. Its just a shame I dont have a spare SATA drive to hand so I could rule out the motherboard.

Ahhh well, will Scandisk and see if theres a program on the Maxtor website for checking integrity and report back later! :thumby:

Thanks for the continued help.

EDIT* one last thing.. Are SATA drives powerhungry, as my 400W PSU is lacking in molex connecters so its daisy chained with the Molex feeding the MOBO and I believe the 12V conection is on the same stretch aswell. :-#

 

[~Rob]

Oh ****

http://www.madshrimps.be/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19771 (and thats no the only link!)

Why oh why didnt I google before I got this thing... Because I didnt relise Maxtor was so lame, Really shoulda got a Seagate!

On the plus side, I guess this may well solve the mystery. Anyone know anything about this... My mobo is a standard A8N SLI skt939, will reboot and follow up with BIOS version etc in a sec.

 

[ASSEMBLER]

it maybe worth putting a original molex to the sata but the psu should be fine.

is it a new sata. and do you have pq magic to total wipe it clean and do a complete reinstall of windows without the ide drive connected.see if you just let the xp disc do the format it doesn't wipe it totally clean. it leave traces of the old system on.pq magic will wipe it totally clean.i can't see why the sata shouln't work fine for you.

 

[~Rob]

T'was a brand new drive and has seen several full formats to NTFS and FAT filesystems this weekend.

I've done some more snooping and it seems there is an Issue between the Daimond Max 9/10 drives and nForce4 chipsets. Those lucky enough not to suffer the slow boot problems, have dreadfull data loss and curruption issues! I havent had the pleasure of file corruption, as I cant get any files on the thing, but everything else being described rings true to my expereinces.

Apparently Nvidia are aware of the problem (via an article on the Inquirer) and are more than happy to lay the blame on Maxtor. Maxtor on the otherhand arent saying anything and are refusing to offer any support or advice, let alone the supposed Firmware fix on there website.

There are a few quick fixes, including setting any Ultra ATA (IDE) devices to "cable select" rather than "Master". I've tried this and a couple of other things to no avail. There is a specific firmaware version that everyone is blaming it on, but not everyone agrees and my drive also has a completly different and supposdly "newer" firmware.

TBH at this point, I'm ready to to take a 20% restocking fee, assuming I can persude the place I bought it from to take it back. Failing that I guess its an Ebay job!

I will NEVER buy Maxtor again and advise everyone to be very carefull with their Mobo's when choosing there SATA drives. Also worth mentioing peeps with Hitcha Deskstars are reporting similar issues, but not in so great a number it seems.

Thanks for everyones help with this. Trust me in future I will be sure to google ALL my components before I flex the Mastercard! Let this be a lesson to us all! BUY SEAGATE!!!

 

[ASSEMBLER]

i also run maxtor ide drives no problem with the nforce chipset.but i do not set them as master when running a sata drive sata is master and both my ide drives are slave.if i set one as ide master it confuses the bios and tries to boot the wrong hard drive.have you tried it as a slave.also i dont thing the seagate are any better as this is what i have for sata no different at all

 

[~Rob]

I didnt think there was a master/slave option for SATA drives? The only IDE device thats gonna be present with the Maxtor SATA drive is a DVD drive and thats still set as cable select.

 

[d_source]

Not sure how to help you mate, but I can tell you that Western digital is working fine for me. I had 1 IDE (master) and 1 SATA drive workign fine together with no problems. Now i have 2 SATA II drives working well together as well. So when/if you leave Maxtor, WD is a good option. BTW, i was thinking of going with Maxtor with my A8N SLI board as well...thank goodness i didnt!

 

[~Rob]

Not sure how to help you mate, but I can tell you that Western digital is working fine for me. I had 1 IDE (master) and 1 SATA drive workign fine together with no problems. Now i have 2 SATA II drives working well together as well. So when/if you leave Maxtor, WD is a good option. BTW, i was thinking of going with Maxtor with my A8N SLI board as well...thank goodness i didnt!

Yeah.. Seagate drives seem a little cheaper than WD at the places I'm looking, but I'm thinking either will do the job nicely. I've decided the drive has to go anyway. Luckily in the UK we have a consumer law called "The Distance selling act" which means you can reject any product you buy online or mail order, for any reason whatsoever within seven days of recieiving it, assuming its in "as new" condition ofcourse.
I wasnt able to get in touch with the place today (gave up after 20mins on hold ) but I'll do it on works time tommorrow! . So with any luck I should have a refund to put towards something else this side of Christmas. Would really upset the misses if I couldnt play all the wonderfull games shes gonna give me on Christmas day..lol