Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Plus strange problem/fat corruption???

[mugsi]

Hi i got a Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Plus 80 gigs harddrive and i have a problem never met before in my hardware experience.
A little background:
The BOX is PIII 672Mhz(112FSBx6) 256 RAM on Elitegroup P6BAT-A+ mobo running Windows 98SE and FAT32 as filesystem. The drive is properly installed, recognised by BIOS and windows perfectly. So i become a some sort of FAT corruption(i think that is it). Some directories content looks very funny. Here's a screenshot

http://mugsi.hit.bg/corr-dir.jpg

The content of this directory should be 10 files or less and the size around 3gigs i think. Nevermind. To be honest this drive makes this joke with me for 3rd time. Whats making me think that is some sort of FAT corruption is that the previous two times the root folder was affected so everything was messy like on the screenshot. I ran some recovery softwares and the all the data available before this thing was on the drive so i managed to save a little because before the corruption the drive was highly fragmented because of use many P2P programs which write to drive not constantly. I ran many tests and every program says the drive is ok. Even the Maxtor's PowerMax gives the message "Your drive is certified error free!" after doing all the tests available. HDD Regenerator did not find any bad sectors. Other programs from Hiren's Boot CD report also that the drive is ok. Forgot to mention that the S.M.A.R.T. values are ok too. I'm asking for help here because the drive warranty is over since maxtor provide my drive only with one year warranty. I guess a decision may be parititioning the drive for example in four 20 gigs pieces in case windows(fat32) cannot handle 80gb FAT but i really doubt this.
So, any help well apreciated in advance.

p.s. please excuse my loosy english

 

[micker377]

Fat32 can handle only 32gig partitions. You have to go to Win 2000, or Win XP and run NTFS filetype to have a large single partition. I'd just re-partion in 3 partitions and be done with it.

 

[wolluf]

Micker - fat32 can certainly handle partitions up to at least 128GB - so 80 shouldn't be a problem. Win98's fdisk has a problem with partitions over 64GB - but there is a patch for this -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263044&Product=w98.

mugsi. I suspect you have a hardware problem that is not the hard drive - I've had similar gobbledygook - often bad RAM is the problem (but might be any other hardware item in the machine)

 

[micker377]

wolluf:
You're right on that one, I checked my own slave (60gig Fat32), and it was fine. I don't know where my head was! Gotta stop staying up so late. Sorry mugsi for the bad info.

 

[mugsi]

Hi, thank u all for posting here.
@wolluf
first, this patch for fdisk is not to fix parititions over 64gb, but to help fdisk recognise properly the whole disk size of disks larger than 64gb.
Yep, the problem should be hardware, but i have other two drives a 20g Fujitsu and a 30g Maxtor and they run fine not corruption at all. So it must be the drive or the mobo really dont like this drive or Windows98 maybe really cant handle a paritition >32gigs. So i've parititioned the drive already in 3 pieces and i'll start to fill the drive today to see if the corruptio occurs again and i'll post back here.

 

[jurgen36]

I formated 260 Gbyte drives with win98sp1 fdisk in fat 32, no problems at all. No need to partition at all. However winxp is a step backwards and can only format 32 Gbyte max in fat32 format, but it can read and write to any drive once they are formated. One of my students has a terrabyte drive, formated ok with win98sp1 fdisk and format. Regards

Jurgen

 

[mugsi]

yo, i've read about this limitation in winxp. yes 98 can format larger parititions but can access them properly. thats wath bother's me. I use Win98SE with all available updates installed. I still hope that the drive is ok :]]], so i gonna do that experiment i mentioned above. THX for posting

 

[cdogg]

Jurgen,
I find it interesting that your student was able to format an entire terabyte using FAT32 skipping by all the known barriers, many of which are described here:

http://www.spcug.org/reviews/bl0107.htm

Plus, Windows 98 doesn't support 48-bit LBA internally. You have to rely on 3rd-party integration from Intel or the chipset manufacturer which is a hit & miss. See this:

http://www.48bitlba.com/faq.htm#FAQ7

That first link above also points out that FAT32 doesn't scale well as partition size grows. It takes longer for Windows to locate stored information and calculate free space at bootup the higher you go. Therefore it only makes sense to go with NTFS as you approach 100GB and beyond, unless of course you're still on an older OS.

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[mugsi]

Hi again,
I've parititioned the disk to 2 29.9GB pieces and one 16.3. After writing on the second 29.9GB paritiotion i got a bluscreen error : Unable to write to drive. Data may be lost. It is so frustrating. And the diagnose software still claims that the drive is certified erorr free. Any suggestions ?

 

[mugsi]

I've tried to write a bunch of files on the 16.3GB directory. And i've been stopped by the same error. As a side effect the other two parititions were corrupted even the drive labels were pretty messed up. Take a look

http://mugsi.hit.bg/corrupt.jpg

. Drive D and E are the 29.9 Pieces and G the 16.3 which i was writing to. I'm suprised that the unsuccessful writing to G has caused D and E to die. I'm out of ideas now . Hope somebody will helps with that. C ya

 

[micker377]

Strange coincidence, I just got done fighting a Maxtor 60gig. Different problem, but I did get the data off, and went to re-format. Maxtor diagnosis (even long test), showed no problems. Went to use MaxBlast to format it, and got a "Hard drive time out" error. Finally had to use fdisk and format the hard way.

 

[mugsi]

I've continued to play with the disk this time formated it as a one 80gb fat32 paritition and started to copy files from my other drive. Writing the first 30gb's was successfull, then ~30.5gb windows said it again "Unable to write to drive" so i stopped the copying becouse a new blue screen pop ups every second. I tried one more time and the error occured again when around 30gb were written to drive. So there must be something. However the drive can be low level formated with no problem. Writing zeros to each sector seems to go perfectly. A bit odd.

I've forget to mention something before - I'm using a 40 Conductor IDE Cable. Can this be the problem. It sounds unreasonable because the error occurs every time at one specified place on the drive, but im going to buy 80 Conductor cables to test it one more time. If anybody thinks that would be a resolution please post.

 

[cdogg]

The main difference in an 80-conductor cable would involve faster UDMA modes negotiated between the drive and the BIOS. Without it, your drive should still run fine on a 40-conductor cable, only at the slower ATA/33 mode.

There's a small possibility that it might make a difference in your problem, but for the most part it shouldn't.

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[mugsi]

I found this article:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable-c.html

thought it can be usefull and there is like to be possible a data corruption to occur on some systems due to 40 Conductor cables use. So, i'll wait for the shipment of my new cables.

 

[cdogg]

Yes, that site is a great source. However, I will caution the advice about data corruption on a 40-conductor cable. First of all, data corruption's main nemesis is a high field of electro-magnetic interference. How likely is that the case here, especially since the last drive in the system didn't have a problem on that same cable?

The other possibility is the position of the drive on the cable. I think the most important thing to take from that link is about the position. If a single device, make sure you are using the end connector. If multiple devices, make sure the end connector is the Master (in theory this shouldn't matter, but has made a difference in my experience).

Secondly, some optical devices (DVD, CD, burners, etc) both new and old specifically say in their specifications to ONLY use a 40-conductor cable. Why? I have no idea, but it's true. Because of this, I would take lightly with a grain of salt any criticisms you see of using a 40-conductor cable. Hard drives, though, should be using an 80-conductor cable mainly for optimum speed. Data corruption during transfer is an unlikely scenario with either type of cable.

Would be nice though if that were the problem![tab]

If not, I would suggest starting over and re-create the partitions using a Win98SE boot disk (or advanced utility like PartitionMagic). Make sure you only have one primary set to active, and the other two as logical. Or heck even better, just make two partitions to start and leave the third as unallocated space to save time. Once it checks out, then go ahead and format the rest...

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884