Parrotgeek7 Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 For those of you using any of the Maxtor SATA drives, and even some of the IDE drives manufactured and shipped between 6/04 and 2/05 please take a moment to heed this warning.There is a know manufacturing issue that is causing the drives to fail unexpectadly and w/o warning. It manifests itself as a hdd that hangs on the windows splash screen.I was part of a conference call today in which the Dell and Maxtor reps and techs both acknowledged that they had a "significantly higher" rate of failure on drives manufactured during that period then any other drives.The Dell onboard diagnostic shows an error code 7, which in Dell speak means..."HOLY CRAP!!!!".. The other diagnostic code begins with 00F0W2: (Thats another Dell code)Not meaning to be an alarmist but though people should know so they can take the neccessary precautions. (backup backup backup)This problem seems to exists mainly in the drives OVER 160GB.Just thought people should know. Be good.PG7 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir_Siddy Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 Thanks for the warning. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mx² Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 I think I'll be OK, but I'll backup just in case. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
xxkbxx Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 If enough people conplain - maybe you can get an RMA on it Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Parrotgeek7 Posted September 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 If enough people conplain - maybe you can get an RMA on it<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Whe I spoke with Dell and gave them the error codes, they didn't even flinch before they offered to send out a new drive.They won't, as far as I can tell, replace a working drive but if it fails they will because they do know they have a problem. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
screi Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 (edited) i wish they(Maxtor) had acknowledged this a couple of months ago...when my 160gb drive died a sudden and noisy death...when i tried to get a rma after getting the famous eight number code..i was politely told my drive was out of warranty..by a month...the good news was that i was using it as a backup slave and had been backing it up to dvd regularly..so i lost no data...just a lot of time and stress...i switched to seagate...5-year warranty and nice and quiet... Edited September 6, 2005 by screi Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Parrotgeek7 Posted September 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 i wish they(Maxtor) had acknowledged this a couple of months ago...when my 160gb drive died a sudden and noisy death...when i tried to get a rma after getting the famous eight number code..i was politely told my drive was out of warranty..by a month...the good news was that i was using it as a backup slave and had been backing it up to dvd regularly..so i lost no data...just a lot of time and stress...i switched to seagate...5-year warranty and nice and quiet... <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I have a hunch seagates 5 yr warranty is going to play a major role in determining which hdd to but from now on. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Honda_Boy Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 uhhhhh uh oh. i got mine in about february and it's a 160gb. is this Prob mostly in Dells? what kinda manufacturing defect its it are OEM drives in deep doo doo. man you are worrying me man. i have 80 gb of this drive taken up. knowing my luck luck recntly it don't look good.i'm glad you said SATA and keyword here SOME IDE cause mine is IDE maybe i'm safe. i'd much rather loose my mobo or cpu (not my video card though cause i have too many layin around thus harder to convince my parents to buy a new one). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
screi Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 uhhhhh uh oh. i got mine in about february and it's a 160gb. is this Prob mostly in Dells? what kinda manufacturing defect its it are OEM drives in deep doo doo. man you are worrying me man. i have 80 gb of this drive taken up. knowing my luck luck recntly it don't look good.i'm glad you said SATA and keyword here SOME IDE cause mine is IDE maybe i'm safe. i'd much rather loose my mobo or cpu (not my video card though cause i have too many layin around thus harder to convince my parents to buy a new one).<{POST_SNAPBACK}>well this may help you develope a good back-up routine...and perhaps consider moving your data to a more reliable drive..how much worry is your data worth...?? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Parrotgeek7 Posted September 7, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 Whatever you can't afford to lose should be on another disk (or at least have a copy on another disk). Thats the whole point of backups.If you're unfortunate enough to lose you back up drive, you should have the original to work off of.Always keep 2 sets of data. Original and Backup.You don't...then don't whine when all your stuff goes bye bye. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
CataclysmCow Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 I love getting insider information, but do you know of any 3rd parties that can confirm this, PG7? When a bin goes bad manf's usually report it within a few days after the reports roll in.Don't think of this as a scar on Maxtor's reputation. Every manf has had their goofs. I personally LOVE Maxtor (I'm an Atlas fiend). I think if PC users just spent an extra $100-$150 on decent storage solutions they'd never have to worry about issues like this. A decent enterprise drive will easily run 24/7 for more than a decade and you very rarely run into these types of bin flaws. You can find a Adaptec 2490 for about $5 on eBay and Atlas 10k 36GBs run for about $29. That's a fraction of the cost that you'd pay for a WD Raptor. Spend a little more money on a controller and you'll be seeing 90MB/s+ performance at a fraction of the cost of a Raptor-II with the benefit of RAID3/5The Dell onboard diagnostic shows an error code 7, which in Dell speak means..."HOLY CRAP!!!!".. The other diagnostic code begins with 00F0W2: (Thats another Dell code)Where is this error code presented? The ATA controller at POST? I rarely get to deal with Dells other than the PowerEdge Line. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Parrotgeek7 Posted September 7, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 The Dell onboard diagnostic shows an error code 7, which in Dell speak means..."HOLY CRAP!!!!".. The other diagnostic code begins with 00F0W2: (Thats another Dell code)Where is this error code presented? The ATA controller at POST? I rarely get to deal with Dells other than the PowerEdge Line.On the Dells (at least the one I pulled this error code from...an 8700) if you boot into the setup menu and go into the diagnostic partition there are several test you can run (4 actually).The code also indicated it failed a post test, which i would have thought to mean either a bad cpu/mobo/ram or vid card but apparently Dell includes the sata drive in the post test too.I haven't heard of any 3rd party confirmations or recalls, but when they immediately go straight to replacing the drive, without asking questions and they acknowledge that they are having unusual failure rates I usually don't go looking for Toms hardware or some such site to confirm it. after all, its money out of their pockets so if it wasn't a bad drive, why would they jump to the replacement option? Don't know, don't care, just relaying what was said to me as a PSA and/or heads up. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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