Hello everyone.
I have a Maxtor 40GB IDE DiamondMax Plus 8, which with the DS show me error IDNF
i ordered a PCB but does the same thing
do i need to do any soldering? any advice?
thank you in advance

These drives were prone to problems in their firmware located on the disk surface. This is not a user-serviceable issue. If your drive is identified as "N40P" during BIOS startup then your drive has this problem.

There is nothing to do with your PCB board. You more than likely have other problems in this drive which require knowledge on where to look and how to repair it. Yes msurgeon is correct you need tools in order to access the SA to fix these problems so you can get data off your drive. You are in Greece and there is a good member here on the forum rafaala (Xronis). He can help you in this one and if you do not do anything else and there is no other problems in this one the recovery should not cost you too much at the moment but if you try to do this one on your own the price goes up because of all the problems. Send him a PM and see what he says to you on this one.

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Iorana Haraharaini

if u need help contact with me .



Xronis

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T3 Professional Data Recovery
http://www.t3-recovery.com

Normally a firmware issue on these drives. As msurgeon said, the classic symptom is the drive identifying by its family name rather than the actual 6E040.... that is its actual model number.

i just got the Atola, which is known to do firmware recovery, imaging and other things.
as msurgeon said the drive is identified as "N40P"
how can i repair the firmware. should i get a donor drive, back up the firmware and put it on the customers one?

It isn't that simple I'm afraid, the firmware that controls a drive is a complex beast, some bits can be swapped with a copy from a similar drive, some require the drive to be identical and yet some more cannot be swapped under any circumstances if you require any data from the device.

I am not familiar with Atola yet, does it provide a report on the state of the drive's firmware? I imagine that for that you will need the drive to be in Safe Mode and a loader will be needed, although as I say I do not know the way Atola works and whether it resolves this problem for you.

Once we know what the firmware issue is we can advise, it would not be wise to do so beforehand. You should also bear in mind that it is not exclusively firmware problems that cause the drive to be identified as an N40P.