[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: HD manufacturer's utilities fail to see drive (was New Data Disk Errors)

[Richard Geoffrion]

Chris Cox wrote:
> Johnny Cybermyth wrote:
>   
>> Has any ever bought a drive which was not recognized by the 
>> manufacturer's disk utilities?
>>
>> I bought a new Maxtor IDE hard drive from Fry's a few weeks ago for an 
>> older P4 HP Pavilion desktop.  When I installed the drive, I tried to do 
>> the initial format using the manufacturer's disk utilities, but it 
>> wouldn't see the drive.
>>     
>
> Maxtor's utilities are junk.  I've talked to then many times
> about it.  Try getting the Ultimate Boot CD... it has an older
> version of the Maxtor utility on it which has never let me
> down.
>   


For the record,  out of 18 identical Maxtor MaxLine Plus II SATA 
enterprise drives, I've had all EIGHTEEN fail within a 2.5 year 
period...along with two of the warranty replacement drives.  That's OVER 
a 100% failure rate.   Today...I'm changing out a failed desktop-quality 
160Gig PATA drive after 3.5 years of use in a server....(which...I 
suppose I find respectable.)

For what it's worth, if one NEEDS a failure diagnostic code for RMA 
purposes, all one has to do is to assign a Maxtor drive a 3Ware raid 
signature (make the maxtor disk a 'single-disk' on a 3Ware controller) 
and the Maxtor diagnostic utility will fail 100% of the time and 
generate a diag code.  Attempts to explain this to Maxtor (now Seagate) 
have been met with incredulity and disbelief from their support 
staff.    I don't bother explaining any more.  I just get my diag code 
for drives I know are bad and go on with life.


-- 
Richard