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Elledan

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2010
Joined
Oct 18, 2001
Messages
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I'm sitting here, trying to calm down after resolving a problem with my main workstation which started a couple of hours ago.

For some weird reason one of the drives (Maxtor 120GB) hooked up to the onboard Promise controller caused the whole system to slow down to the point where it become pretty much unusable. I could copy files to or from the affected drive at anywhere near decent speeds, if at all.
Win2k complained about the swap file (located on the affected drive) giving problems (event viewer was filled with errors about the drive returning errors for the swap file).

I then downloaded the Powermax drive fitness utility from Maxtor's site, and let it do its stuff. It found a number of errors with the drive, which it was able to repair.

After rebooting the system everything appears to work fine once again *knocks on wood*

All in all, a couple of less than stellar hours, but with a happy ending :)

So what are your experiences with such utilities?
 
Ive found that they tell me my drives are fine, but i still have the sneaking suspision that there is something awry.
 
Glad to hear the program resolved your problems, I also have used the Maxtor utility program and like stated above mine the Hd was working fine even though 2 weeks later bam good bye Hd. Thankfully I backed everything up.
 
I just tried using PowerMax by booting off of an ultimate boot CD but it didn't do anything.

My mom tripped the breaker on our house twice in a row today while vacuuming. I'm not sure if she just had every appliance in the house on or what, because I was in my room with my headphones on, but I noticed when my computer and clock shut off. She reset the breaker, started vacuuming again, and then it happened again.

Now her computer won't boot up and the hard drive is making a metallic clicking sound. When it tries to boot there is a message on the diagnostic screen about "Fixed Disk 0: Maxor <somemodelnumber>" that I've never seen before. Presumably the drive is dead, but to check I decide to connect it to my computer and run PowerMax.

It says "Scanning for drives: (up to 1 minute)" and I've left it sitting there for 12 minutes, but nothing ever happens other than the drive clicking for a bit and then stopping.

I've also tried using PowerMax on another Maxtor drive a friend replaced from his old computer, presuambly because it was broken, and PowerMax sat scanning for minutes also. It never says it can't find any drives, or that it has found drives. It just sits. My computer isn't crunching like it's working either.

I know the drive is hooked in fine because I can see it listed in the BIOS.

What's the deal? What can I do?
 
PowerMax

Note: PowerMax v 4.09 will not detect ATA or SATA hard disks connected to embedded or add in RAID controllers, NVIDIA Force 3, or Force 4 chipsets. If the hard disk is connected to an unsupported controller, it will have to be moved to an alternate system, or controller for diagnosis. Please check the PowerMax download page periodically for updates. Beginning June 1st 2004 all versions of PowerMax prior to v4.09 will no longer be supported. Maxtor recommends that you update to version 4.09 before testing your hard disk.
Click to expand...
 
Yaw, I saw that on the site Czar. I have the drives connected as master to my IDE 2 slot on my mobo (I don't connect them both at once). It's not on a RAID controller, it's right on the chipset part, so I don't think that's the problem.

I left it on overnight with one drive, and nothing happened, and I left it on for an hour with the other, and nothing happened. Maybe I expect too much from DOS diagnostic software, but can't it just say something like "Doh, no drives detected" instead of doing NOTHING AT ALL?
 
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