Maxtor + Nvidia Motherboard Chipset Issue

[Davey W]

We have been made aware of an issue with certain models of Maxtor hard drives and Nvidia motherboard chipsets.

The sympthoms of the problem are;

1, On soft reset the hard drive is not recognised, but on hard reset the hard drive is detected fine.
2, Irratic data corruption. This symptom is often hard to establish compared against a genuine hardware failure and so will have be judged by relevant technical attention at the time the fault is reported.

Please note the following fixes have been created as a result of feedback from Mesh Computers and so may be only of use to Mesh Customers. At this time the update will not be available for download by the general public from the Maxtor website.

Choose which update you need;

Please click on the relevant link depending on which update you need;

For drives less than 400GB, usually starting with the code 6V

For drives greater (or equal to) than 400GB

The update is in the form of a CD .iso file. It's total size is greater than a floppy disc and it cannot be run from the hard drive it's supposed to be working on. We have not tested whether it will work if the relevant files are extracted to a USB key/drive and so cannot advise/support this avenue at this time.

PLEASE NOTE: The update is downloaded in zip format to reduce the download size. You will need to extract it before use.

You will need to burn the .iso file to a CD in order to use the update. If you need help with this please post a request for help and I should be able to have a help guide on how to do this posted to you or in your thread.

Once the disc is created, you will need to boot from it. Your system may not be set to automatically boot from the CD-Rom drive. If this is the case, create a new post/thread and I will provide help with doing this. Please note I will need your Mesh order number to be in your Hexus profile in order to do this.

Davey

[Davey W]

There is currently an un-known element where systems contain two maxtor drives.

We are currently awaiting word from Maxtor on this.

The current solution is to disconnect one of the drives and boot from the CD. After it is done, reconnect the drive, and disconnect the other one and boot from the CD again. Once that is complete, reconnect the drive again.

In light of a recent discussion on SATA and hot-swapping in the forum, I must ask that when connecting and disconnecting the drives, that you do it whilst the system is powered down.

Davey

[tagiles]

Hi Davey,

I have two Maxtor 300GB HDDs in my system, somehow after many attempts I managed to get Windows XP pro installed on what I'd designated as my "slave" (D) drive and so far all is well.
I'm hoping that I can swap the designations over i.e. (C) to (D) and vice-versa.
Anyway as all is OK for now I think I will leave well alone.
I think I'll hold back on installing the new patch too (at least for the time being).

Actually I'm rather pissed off that amongst other things I was told by MESH that I could expand my PC to 4GB SDRAM which I have done. However I find that it is showing 2.23GB of usable memory! So I've thrown away £120 for a measley extra 0.23GB of SDRAM.
When I originally ordered my MESH system your web-site clearly offered up to 4GB SDRAM, which I ordered but was then informed that you were out of stock so had to limit my order to 2GB (no mention was made of any SDRAM limitations of less than 4GBs.

[tagiles]

Incidentally, how does my PC know to boot from the (D) HDD?
On my Dell PC I have to set jumpers to differentiate between the bootable HDD and any slave HDDs.

Thanks

[Agent]

Incidentally, how does my PC know to boot from the (D) HDD?

There will be a setting in the BIOS.
It will list all bootable devices - you just change the order

The RAM issue is also strange, you should have atleast 3gig fully usable.
How much shows in the BIOS ?

[tagiles]

Hi Agent,

Yes, I was aware of the BIOS settings, but I haven't changed anything in the BIOS, yet the PC is now booting to Windows XP which is installed on my (D) HDD.

The BIOS shows the full 4096MB
The Windows properties shows 2.23GB

Thanks

[herulach]

is it a different disk? or just a different partition? It may be windows has installed a bootloader on the first disk to make it boot off the second.

[Agent]

Ive just seen your system spec
I suspect the SLI graphics may be using a large part of the memory addressing space.
If you can, remove one of the cards and see what you get then (im very curious too myself )

Not seen this mentioned before with dual graphics cards, so will defiantly be interesting

[nichomach]

tagiles, please see:
http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx...s&model=P5P800

On a SLI system, since PCI-Ex graphic cards will occupy around 256MB, another 256MB will be occupied after you install a 2nd PCI-Ex graphic card. Hence, 2.75GB memory left only if two SLI cards installed on A8N-SLI Premium while 3.0GB memory left with one graphic card without other add-on devices.

Best bet would appear to be moving to Windows XP Pro x64.

[Agent]

The latest chipsets like Intel 975X, 955X, Nvidia NF4 SLI Intel Edition, Nvidia NF4 SLI X16, and AMD K8 CPU architecture can support the memory swap function.

Dont look like all the NF4 range support this then. Interesting

[tagiles]

Hey guys,

Thanks very much for the info, I'm a little apprehensive about removing one of the nVidia cards at the mo' as I have been having a lot of problems with my system and all is going well as is.
However if I do, I will let you know of the outcome.

I wanted Windows XP pro 64bit, but MESH ONLY added the option to their website a couple of days after I received my order!

I might have a word with them and see if they'll let me swap (I've only had my system for a little over 2 weeks) and it was on their say so that I purchased the additional 2GB SDRAM.

As regards the HDD it is definitely the other drive and not just a different partition. Actually both drives have a single partition.

I may have done something during the installation of Windows from the MESH Recovery Disk that installed it onto the (D) drive. To be honest I've tried so many things to get this PC up and running that I can't remember.

[tagiles]

I thought things were running rather too well - on booting up this morning my system appears to have completely lost its (C) drive, It doesn't appear anywhere.
Is it worth me running the software fix? Bearing in mind that my system has two HDD's (apparently!).
Or should I await a later fix?

[tagiles]

Well today I was forced to boot my PC from the "Maxtor + nVidia patch" CD as I couldn't get the PC to start at all.
I ran through the disconnect/re-connect boot routine and all seems well at the moment.
I had a bit of a shock as when it booted up from the CD the first text on screen said "Windows 98" ?
Anyway it reported on both occasions that it had been successful.

Are my Maxtor drives now 'fixed' for good - or could there conceivably be a need for saving the boot CD for later use?

I currently have a (C) drive which I've called "Archive" and a (D) drive that I've called "Master boot", can I rename these such that the (C) drive becomes the "Master boot"? I ask as I'm not sure that it might prevent my PC from functioning properly. I guess it doesn't really matter which disk is which, but usually the (C) drive is the master.

p.s. with two 512MB GeForce 7900 GTX's installed I was rather struggling to remove and replace the drive connectors (not a lot of room).

Terry

[I-Zombie]

Dear Mesh,

I have a Maxtor HD and was experiencing the exact symptoms as described above. Under the adivce of the Technical Support guy I phoned at Mesh, I ran the firmware update. Whilst at first I was optomistic that this had fixed the problem, I am now finding that the problem has returned.

The symptoms are still random freezes, mostly when writing to the HD and occasional faliure to recognise the HD on soft boot up.

The other problem (which may be unrelated) manifests when I run music editing software (one of the primary uses of the computer). Programs exhibit an erratic clock speed during playback (even playing a blank file). Whether this is a soundcard issue, or a problem with the Chipset, I don't know.

Any advice on further steps I can take to resolve either of these problems would be most appreciated.

Graham.

[echosonic]

The other problem (which may be unrelated) manifests when I run music editing software (one of the primary uses of the computer). Programs exhibit an erratic clock speed during playback (even playing a blank file). Whether this is a soundcard issue, or a problem with the Chipset, I don't know.

Hi Graham,

Which software are you using? There is a known issue with Cubase and mobos with NF4 chipset - most notably, you can see an erratic CPU monitor in Cubase.


Anyway ...

I was having the exact same problems as everyone and noticed this post last week. I downloaded the right iso file for my Maxtor 6V250F0 and updated the firmware. However, I am now having even bigger problems, namely Windows failing to boot.

I installed the Firmware upgrade on Friday and the next cold reboot was on Saturday and the PC refused to go beyond the boot screen (hanging with the HDD light on full). I reset a couple of times (trying restart Windows normally and last known configuration) with no luck and then tried safe mode.

In safe mode it got as far as loading giveio.sys and then hung. (I had installed Speedfan as a protective measure a few months back - I always do - my system is not overclocked).

I was able to get in eventually via last known Windows settings and I began making preparations to back up everything and uninstalled Speedfan, removing the giveio.sys file.

Upon rebooting though, same old problems and this time I wasn't able to get in.

Getting slightly worried, I was starting to think I needed to reinstall Windows (probably will have to anyway) and got as far as booting from my Nero-created boot disk. However, I got the jitters and decided to try a few more things before being that drastic.

Consequently, I decided to try a couple more times to boot normally and what do you know? Windows booted normally! I decided to roll back Windows via System Restore to last week, but upon rebooting I still couldn't boot Windows (same hang). However, I was able to boot via safe mode.

And that is where I am right now ...

[totalwar]

Please note if you use Norton SystemWorks 2006.

Norton SystemWorks 2006 takes out the reg entry's on windows xp for the Maxtor update.There was three reg entry's so you have to ignore theses on the one button check up and it's works fine.