Maxtor Error (Computer Help)

take your hard drive and shove it in your freezer fir a few hours... then try re-connecting it and booting again.

if the glue from an IC or some such leaked across a platter, it may have worked fine while the drive kept spinning and kept it hot... once it cools and hardens though, it may be hard to get the platter spinning again. freezing it can make it brittle enough to shatter once the drive tries to spin up again.

worst case you're no worse off.

also try a boot cd (like bartPE) or plugging it into another computer to see if the drive is readable at all.

take your hard drive and shove it in your freezer fir a few hours... then try re-connecting it and booting again.

if the glue from an IC or some such leaked across a platter, it may have worked fine while the drive kept spinning and kept it hot... once it cools and hardens though, it may be hard to get the platter spinning again. freezing it can make it brittle enough to shatter once the drive tries to spin up again.

worst case you're no worse off.

also try a boot cd (like bartPE) or plugging it into another computer to see if the drive is readable at all.

You're like the Martha Stewart of computers :)

Honestly, what's weird is it's actually DESCRIBING the name of the drive. I've seen dead drives and it says "Primary Disk 0 Not Found".

Laptop-wise, I'll suggest what I suggest to hooskins. Buy something used from Dell and upgrade it yourself. Very easy and cost effective.

TMC is right on here. Never heard of a hard drive being broken enough to dead not work but ok enough for the machine to tell what kind of hard drive it is. Usually thet're either broken totally or working fine. There's not much middle ground. Odd indeed. I'd say "She's dead Jim" That Guy's idea may work. I have heard of it working before.

thanks for the advice guys

You've been itching to buy a new laptop haven't you?

I've similar problems as you in the past but my hard drive screeched once it started spinning. If you're machine isn't worth salvaging, by all means get a new machine. If it is then get a new hard drive and see if that works. if you continue to have issues then you can be certain that your motherboard f'ed up and it's time spend some cash.

You've been itching to buy a new laptop haven't you?

I've similar problems as you in the past but my hard drive screeched once it started spinning. If you're machine isn't worth salvaging, by all means get a new machine. If it is then get a new hard drive and see if that works. if you continue to have issues then you can be certain that your motherboard f'ed up and it's time spend some cash.

I bought an HP laptop Monday night...just minutes before our fantasy football draft. HP Pavilion dv6000. Seemed to be the best choice in my budget.

This is a pretty good argument for having a data-backup option. Do you have an external hard drive, SS?

Hopefully you didn't lose any important data.

Don't buy another Maxtor HD. I've always put Western Digital in PCs I built and they've always been very reliable, flawless for me actually.

Seagate makes good ones too.

Maxtor was bought out by Seagate...so I imagine that Maxtor's quality has gone up a bit since that purchase...

I've always had WD hard drives, and have had nothing but success with them.

all hard drive brands fail.... samsung is by FAR the most reliable, but they're not really big on selling hard drives.

if you work at a repair shop, you'll see everything fail though. seagate has the longest warranty, and WD generally have decent reliability, but nothing's immune...