mesarectifier

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(Drive concerned is a DiamondMax 10 model 6L200P0)

My allegence to Maxtor hard drives has never been tested, with over 10 years of loyal service from the company. Until now - my 200gb DiamondMax has apparently just died.

At least this is what appears to have happened - but the problem has occurred so quickly that I'm left a little skeptical.

The drive has worked fine for a year or so, no noises and no errors whatsoever. Then yesterday evening I was accessing it from another computer on my network and I got a 'corrupt folder' message. I got it with most of, but not all the folders on the drive.

Later that evening, the drive registered in My Computer as having a 'RAW' file system (never a good sign), and after a reboot it didn't show up at all.

I've tried it in my main PC and it just hung the system at boot (when it was searching for IDE devices). When I put it back in it's 'home' computer, it registered in the BIOS with a different name each time I booted up, sometimes the correct name but all in lower case, sometimes just 'mAxToR', sometimes 'mAxToR 612' (but never the fated 'Calypso').

This has all happened so suddenly I'm not convinced it's drive failure. If there's any boot CDs or recovery tools anyone can suggest that'd be just swell (I've tried a couple but they weren't exactly forthcoming with the options promised on the websites).
 

Doughbuy

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GetDataBack NTFS. I used it on my laptop HDD which had a corrupted partition table, and it got back most of my data. The hdd was dead, but most of my music, which was the important stuff survived. Yay.

However, you probably won't be able to boot your computer with this drive attached to an IDE cable. Here, I would recommend you getting an external enclosure, and then accessing that way. GetDataBack should be able to see it even if Windows has problem accesing it. Give it a try.
 

mesarectifier

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Okay, I'll be checking that software out for sure.

Getting an external enclosure sounds attractive, particularly seeing as this computer is about to be replaced by a Mac Mini.

The fact that the drive doesn't register (or at least registers incorrectly) in the BIOS isn't a guaranteed dead drive then?
 

JMecc

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Try Active UnDelete (http://www.active-undelete.com/) - it recovered almost everything from my sister's drive (130GB recovered & 5 temp internet files not, so pretty much perfect for a drive unrecognizable to her system all of a sudded).

Jo
 

Doughbuy

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Problem with my laptop drive, the partition file was screwed up, so it wouldn't boot into windows. Bios recognized it as a drive, but couldn't do anything with it. I'm fairly certain the control board for the drive is fine. As long as you can access the drive, the software recovery can brute force all the data off.

Make sure you have room however to get your data off... and some of it might be corrupted. Either way, might as well give it a shot, can't hurt anything.

However, if it is the drive's control board, than the best way to fix it is with a new board. If it's the disks themselves, then grab your data off and try to format it. If that's not possible, than you're drive is most likely gone.
 

mesarectifier

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However, if it is the drive's control board, than the best way to fix it is with a new board. If it's the disks themselves, then grab your data off and try to format it. If that's not possible, than you're drive is most likely gone.

Well I think the motherboard has done something funny to this drive - it hasn't been making any strange noises or anything, and then suddenly overnight both drives on the primary IDE channel go nuts.

I have here a dead DiamondMax9 160gb drive that used to belong to my brother ("you can keep it if you can fix it")...if worst comes to worst could I remove the control board from this puppy and put it on the current faulty drive?
 

l3admonky

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My vote also goes to GetDataBack NTFS.
The ide connectors on my mobo just recently died and took 2 hards containing roughly 500GB of music, movies, and programs with them

I had to reinstall windows on another HD and used GDB NTFS to recover the files on my corrupted HD's. Windows didn't recognize them but I was still able to recover the data.

You can find it on bit torrent rather easily if you do a search for it
 

Doughbuy

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Actually, now that I think back on it, my Bios couldn't recognize my laptop hdd when it died, but after I but it into an external enclosure and hooked it up to Windows it worked fine. So I would say that's your best/only option right now.

Edit: Didn't really work fine, I was just able to get my data off and toss the drive, but that was because I corrupted the partition table and I couldn't reformat the drive.
 

Doughbuy

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Most generic ones are fine, all 3 of mine are fairly generic, although most external enclosures are generic since no real company makes them except for perhaps Vantec.

I have a Coolmax, a Penguin Gear, and a Bytecc, and I think Coolmax is the best of all of them. The Penguin Gear is kinda noisy because it has a small fan, and the Bytecc is annoying to take apart.

I'd recommend one with an internal fan if possible, or you can be like me and just buy a desk fan to blow over them.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Products from Winternals work really great. You can make a BootCd with many tools. The is a un-delete program witch is not good but if you make the full CD there is another program in there that will re-construct the MFT and e able to get most of the data back. Something to try if get databack doesn't work!

BTW Winternals been bought by Mircrosoft, we might some of their stuff come back in vista/programs
 

maitre

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I have a somewhat similar problem with one of my HDDs.

I am in the process of building a new PC (Win XP pro) and I am sort of installing utilities before I install actual apps. One of the utilities was recovery commander. I installed it and set a recovery point. The next thing that happened was that my backup drive (a physically separate drive) has disappeared from the Win Explorer folder list. At reboot I checked for the drive and it showed up. The strange thing is that the drive name was no longer "MAXTOR" but "MAHTOR" and one of the numbers in the drive description was replaced by an exclamation mark.

After bootup, WE sees it as a local drive and when I click on it to see the files, it says the drive is not formatted, which is of course nonsense. Has anyone any experience with this one?

Thanks,

Ed
 

mesarectifier

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Sounds similar to the problem I'm having - the drive's name is appearing different in the BIOS screen too.

At least it's not reverting to internal codenames (Vega, Calypso etc...), that is a sure sign the firmware is up the creek.
 

blue68f100

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The last one I had that did strange things was PS related. Could not handle the startup power needed with large drives. I've also seen hardware failures cause this too.
 

mesarectifier

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Just a little update after...well, however long I've spent trying to rectify this situation:

I'm pretty certain it's the board that's gone up the creek. A cheap board is bound to go wrong, I'm surprised it lasted the half-decade it did.

I did suspect this, but I wasn't too sure. However, now it's saying there aren't enough resources to run (heaven forbid) a NIC card AND a USB2.0 card. Two PCI cards, holy crap. So yeah, pretty much buggered methinks.

Like I said, it's going to be replaced by a Mac Mini this Christmas, so I think buying that USB caddy will have a use anyway, even if it doesn't rescue the data.
 

SouthernBlow

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To recover the data there is one more option available.
Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS data recovery software. Its a file and partition recovery utility which recovers the lost data from formated hard drive, or data lost due to software malfunction, viruses or even sabotage.

For me it has worked magnificently in the past. so my vote goes to Stellar Phoenix.
To test the software one download the demo from: http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm
If we are able to see the data through demo version mean we can have our data back.
 

maitre

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I have installed my broken HDD into an external enclosure and when I boot up, windows recognizes an external mass storage.

However, neither win explorer nor GetDataBack sees the the external drive.