Crashes seemed to be caused by Maxtor !

[drbgaijin]

Scenario:
Motherboard - MSI - K8N SLI Platinum,socket 939, AMD Athlon 64 3200 processor. 512 Mb ram.
Graphic board - Inno3D GeForce 6600
2 Harddrive caddies.
Caddy 1: Western Digital 160Gb SATA drive partitioned into C: System (80Gb) and D: General (80Gb)
OS is Windows XP Pro SP2 - Japanese version.
Caddy 2: Maxtor DiamondMax 10, series 3.5 - 200Gb - not partitioned.

A third caddy has another Western Digital 160Gb SATA drive partitioned into C: System (80Gb) and D: General (80Gb)
On that disk I have Windows XP Pro SP2 - English version.

The idea is that I can swap the OS disks depending on whether I want Japanese or English OS, but I can share the data on the Maxtor

disk.
The Japanese OS works flawlessly with the setup.

Problem: When I swap to the English OS disk everything works until I try to access the files on the Maxtor.
I can see the Maxtor as drive (F and I can open it and see the folders and files. But if I try to open a file the whole system

crashes.
Just to get some references I replaced the Maxtor drive with a Seagate, and later an IBM drive. Both of them worked with the

Japanese OS and the English OS.
Only the Maxtor seems to be causing a crash - and only on the English OS.

As far as I can make out all the BIOS and drivers etc. are the same for both The Japanese and the English OS.
Any ideas?

 

[mainegeek]

drbgaijin,
Maybe have a look here...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c03621675.mspx

Also, have you tried spliting the 200gig Maxtor into 2 partitions.Then format the first partition using the drive that has the Japanese OS as the boot drive and then shut down and boot with the drive that has the English OS and format the 2nd partition. Label one drive Japanese and the other English.

 

[leedsit]

Hi,

I hate, those drives... I built a new system and spent a week trying to find the fault....... I kept getting XP file errors ( corrupt ) , which kept killing the system.
Then I found a note about formatting the disk not with XP when I install the OS but using the software that Maxtor supply to partition the disk ready for the OS. 30 Minutes later after the Maxtor format Partition and quick format, and an OS install, all worked fine, and has been so since.... not sure if this is your problem but would recommend using the maxtor utility....

LEEroy
MCNE6,CCNA2,CWNA, Project+

 

[drbgaijin]

Thanks Mainegeek and Leedsit for your suggestions.
The double partition idea does not fit my plans for using the drive, so I have already taken a look at Maxtors site and downloaded their MaxBlast4 software for installoing etc.
I will try it out later in the week.
I will post the results here for any others who may need the feedback.
However - any other comments are suggestions are welcome.

It seems Maxtor makes life a little extra difficult for us.
I did not choose the Maxtor drive - it was part of a bundle I bought. In the future I will probably steer clear of them.