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Firmware repair or what?
Is there anyway to boot a hard drive on Windows 7 that has a corrupt index in the firmware? The FAT32 firmware will boot fine on my old XP machine but the Windows 7 machine finds the corrupt index and say it has to be formatted. Windows 7 see the Maxtor 200 gig drive as a 127kb in size. I tried to format it in Windows 7 but get the message Windows (7) can not format this drive.
Seagate bought out Maxtor and shut the company down. Even though it website say it supports Maxtor drives it doesn't have any firm ware for them. The website even lists an upgrade for the specific firmware I need but doesn't have it either. I guess one way to get rid of the competition is to buy it and shut it down.
Is there any generalized firmware for hard drives out there? I do use a RAID card to connect my Maxtor PATA drives to the Window 7 machine. I even have an earlier Maxtor 200 gig drive that works fine on Windows 7
Roy
briantg
79 Posts
1
August 20th, 2012 07:00
>Maxtore 6Y2000P0 200 gig drive as a drive that is attached to my PCI card.
>Windows 7 disc management see it as just a raw drive that needs to be format.
This is the key to your story. I'd say that there's a good chance the drive is healthy and that it simply has a logical corruption. It also could be that the drive (which is nearing or past normal life-cycle if it's been in use since you bought it) has bad sectors around the important meta-information (partition table, boot sectors, master file table, etc). Bad sectors in critical areas are very common on old Maxtor diamondmax plus 9.
Windows XP and Windows 7 both speak FAT32/NTFS file systems without need of any "firmware" or "drivers". The BIOS is seeing it correctly as a 200GB "binary bucket" but there is an issue with the partition table. If your only goal is to re-use the drive, I'd suggest doing a re-initialization of the drive and doing a "deep" format (not a quick format) to ensure that the drive is actually healthy. After re-initialization the drive should allow you to lay down a new NTFS partition. If there's any data on the old drive that is meaningful you shouldn't do these things as a re-initialization and deep format will wipe all the old data off.
ejn63
9 Legend
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87.5K Posts
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August 4th, 2012 12:00
This sounds like a drive that was installed with a utility meant to bypass a BIOS limit on the hard drive size - it's a software issue, not a firmware issue. You should be able to zero out the drive using the utility Seagate provides (or look for an old copy of MaxBlast) and then use it at full capacity.
PhotoRoy9
36 Posts
0
August 4th, 2012 18:00
I already formatted it with the Maxtor software on the XP computer. Still get error message on windows 7. I have yet written 0's to the drive yet. The last two versions of the Maxtor software doesn't provide this feature anymore. I don't know if I wipe out the firmware whether Windows 7 can put its own firmware on to the drive.
briantg
79 Posts
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August 17th, 2012 10:00
If the drive is detecting in BIOS on multiple machines with a tiny capacity instead of 200GB, especially if its detecting as a CALYPSO and not 6Y200P0 (or whatever the model is) the drive-specific firmware is jacked and you should just buy a new drive. If it's detecting in the BIOS as 200GB (or ~190GB) the drives firmware is likely fine and there's simply a tiny partition on the front. What does it say in disk management?
PhotoRoy9
36 Posts
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August 18th, 2012 13:00
The drive is noticed in the boot up as a Maxtore 6Y2000P0 200 gig drive as a drive that is attached to my PCI card.
Windows 7 disc management see it as just a raw drive that needs to be format. I don't think Windows 7 disc maangement see firmware. The OEM partitions I see on other drives in Windows disc management that say OEM I believe was put there by Dell to install its recovery partiton (which is also visible in disc management). But Windows 7 can not format a 127 kb drive as it is too small. The drive is basicly a XP only drive and has always been formatted as NFTS . I have decided to keep my XP computer to run my dedicated film scanner and not have to worry about the vitual XP and getting a new adapter board that will fit in a 1x PCI slot and then run a 16X PCI card.. The Seagate software did note that the firmware had the updated version but the Seagate software did not have the function to write zeros to every sector as described in the software directions.
The only way I can find out about the file is thru my data resucue program which lists it and its properties as follows
Name: ROOT
Address: 2
Index: 18446744073709551615
Size: 18446744073709551615
Time: 4294967295
Link: GOOD
Flags: DIRECTORY VISIBLE
---
FAT Status: GOOD_IN_FAT
Invalid Index
Entry first cluster 2: 268435455(EOF_CLUSTER)
Node first cluster 4294967294: Invalid cluster
---
PhotoRoy9
36 Posts
0
September 14th, 2012 10:00
Drive had been used as my C drive for a while, as one of my backup C drives (I always have two duplicates of my C drive)
and as a backup for picture files (I have third duplicate pictures drive) so it should have a good amount of usage left in it. Windows 7 still see it as a drive having a capacity of 127 kb and can not format it asit is too small for formating. I have formated it in XP both short and regular. I haven't got the real old Maxtor software that wrote 0 or 1 to the drive. Seagate didn't have software that write 0 to the drive even though I download one Seagate software that claimed that it did provide such a feature. Since you say XP and Windows 7 needs no firmware I will find a program to write 0 to it or a program that can see all the partitions.