Problems with a Maxtor HDD - Help needed

[DarkBahamut]

OK im doing a build for a family member and i went with a maxtor HDD since they were slightly cheaper than the other brands (ive never used a maxtor HDD myself before) however ive been having nothing but trouble with it so far, so im looking for some advice before i RMA my second maxtor drive within 2 weeks.

So the problem, the drive seems to cause the system to hard lock at random times during certain hard drive access, mostly during soft reboots. A prime example is trying to install windows. One the very first screen in the setup when you hit enter, setup checks the hard drive. If you have hard reset the system (IE have been into the BIOS or reset the system before this point) then 80-90% of teh time it will past this screen, if the system has been rebooted without being powered down, then the system will hard lock when setup checks the drive, every single time.

If you pass that point then the setup works fine untill it first reboots the system, since it doesnt power down the system, the setup will then hard lock when it goes to load the next part, the only way to get past this is to turn the system off then on again, then it will go to the next screen maybe 30-50% of the time. If it gets into the main setup then it will finish fine, untill the system reboots again, then it hard locks on the windows loading screen, untill you power it off then on again. Once it gets to windows it seems mostly stable, but restarting the system without powering down will always cause windows to hard lock up.

Now the first drive i had 2 weeks ago did the above, i tried everything with it. Tried a different power cable, different SATA cable, changed the jumper between SATA I and II modes, reset the CMOS changed BIOS settings. After that i look the drive out the system and put it in my own with exactly the same results. In the end i sent the drive back and got a new one yesterday.

Well im having exactly the same problem again, hard lockups. now i know the last drive was bad because even putitng it in another system didnt help, but now i have another in the same condition and nothing i have tried has fixed the issue at all, i even tried upsating the BIOS with no luck.

EDIT: Also, two different XP CDs were tested and neither worked, also the drive even hard locked when trying to run the maxtor HDD tester. So its not the CD.

So it looks like this drive is bad too, which effectively makes 2 drives DOA. Now before i RMA this agian for my 3rd drive, does any have any ideas on anything i might has missed? Heres the specs on the system in question.

Sempron 3000+
1GB (2*512MB) PC3200 ram
Gigabyte GA-K8NS (NF3 chipset)
Radeon 9250SE
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 plus SATA-II 160GB
Smartpower 2.0 350W.
NEC ND-4550
Some 56k PCI modem

My system (the first drive was tested in this and didnt work in here either)

Athlon 64 X2 4400+
2GB (4*512MB) PC3200 ram
DFi LanParty NF4 Ultra-D
Geforce 7800GTX
TruePower 2.0 550W
Lite-On 52x32x52 CD-RW
NEC ND-3520
Audigy 2
Other HDDs were disconnected when the maxtor was tested

Now i havent tested the second drive in my system yet, but since its exactly the same problem, i dont think its even worth bothing with. Any ideas on anything i can try or is it time for another RMA?

 

[Tilde]

Generally, what I do in such situations, is boot up a linux disk and write zeros across the drive. If any errors occur, I RMA it.

 

[DarkBahamut]

I used the maxtor software of a bootable cd to first zeros to the first one which didnt help (and took about 5 tries).