Maxtor HDD... Is It Dead?

Right, a few days ago i turned on my pc and one of my maxtor drives sounded a bit on the rough side... and then started to (what sounded like) beep at me.. the bios wouldent detect the drive and it would hang at the post untill the drive stopped "beeping" and windows would boot normaly (Windows is installed on my other maxtor drive that is working fine) once in windows the drive was also missing from my computer and the device manager.. I downloaded Tools from maxtor (PowerMax) but the program cant detect the drive just like the bios/jmicron ide controller cant..

Is this drive now dead?? if it is ill need to get it replaced under its warranty

more than likely, maxtor drives are absolutely rubbish in my view. They are the only brand of drive to fail on me ever.

Is it a bit like a musical tune it plays to you?

Sounds like the spindle has seized on the drive, it is a common thing, we see them fairly often. If you need any data recovery check out the bottom link in my signature. I work in the lab at a data recovery centre.

Thanks, but no data needed to be recoverd.. just had vista installed on it

As for the spindle thing...


im not sure what you mean.. the drive spins up ok but if its the arm with the read/write heads that your talking about that have sezied then i would have to agree with you.

the "beeps" are steady.. 1 beep every second for about 10 seconds Beep... Beep And so on...

Ah, it's not a seized spindle then if it spins up, presuming it is getting up to speed anyway...

The musical tune is very noticable, and not just constant beeps. What you are describing is quite unusual, possible a firmware corruption causing it, if there was a head fault it wouldn't be beeping, there would be a very clear clicking. Either way, sounds like the drive is goosed...

Glad you didn't lose any data btw!!

ok.,..

Im glad i didnt have any data i needed on it... i usaly use that drive as a backup for all my files!!!

Invest in a seagate, We return all our data on them as we find they are the most reliable drives of the lot, yeah you will still have failures with Seagate, but we don't see as many of them as we do Maxtors (usually with firmware corruptions or bad sectors)

Before someone says I am well aware seagate own maxtor but they are still using the same Seagate chassis for now so i would put my trust in them until proven different. Anyway I open up the lab in around 7 hours, need sleep!

Lol... i was thinking of getting a 320Gb WD drive... but is seagate are better... then

I didnt want to go to them cus i thought that now they own maxtor they might of been using the same sorta drive maxtor do! but since they dont ill add seagate back to my list
Thanks again

Really confusing - Maxtor is allegedly rubbish, but Seagate are excellent - even though they are the same company ?

My Maxtor's still working out fine after three years. I did have two IBM drives fail in a short space of time though (the second was a replacement for the first).