My 30GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 has been running 24 hours/day, 7 days/week since October 2002. On March 8, 2007, Windows XP bluescreened with a problem in Win32k.sys. When I rebooted, the hard drive was not working correctly. During BIOS POST, the drive is reported as a Maxtor N40P instead of Maxtor 6E030L0 and the following error message is shown: "Secondary master hard disk fail". The SMART status recently reported by SpeedFan was around 90% for both fitness and performance, so SMART data did not have any signs of imminent drive failure.

Drive configurations (not using Cable Select):
First IDE channel Master: Hitachi Deskstar, 30GB
First IDE channel Slave: Maxtor MaxLine III, 250GB
Second IDE channel Master: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8, 30GB
Second IDE channel Slave: BENQ DW1640 DVD RW

On top cover of the drive:
DiamondMax Plus 8
Date: AUG302002
Code: NAR61590
LBA: 60058656
6E030L0510201 AAA
SN: E10B2PTE
K,G,G,A
A 304
PCB: Is this number important? I'm not sure where exactly on the PCB it is.

Results of Victoria 4.2 beta, in PIO mode:

Model: Maxtor N40P
Firmware: NAR6159Z
Serial: <blank>
Disk size: 80293332 LBAs - 39205MB
CHS: 16383/16/63 - 8063MB
SMART: Disabled,Errlog,Selftest
CACHE: 2048k;L/A=ON;Wr=ON; - OK
Support: LBA,HPM,AAM,APM,DLM,DMA - UDMA-6
AAM Val: 0 - Disabled
APM Val: 0 - Disabled
Status: *Failed
Security: Not supported
DRSC and DRDY button lights in Victoria are blue.

What is the best order of operations for restoring the firmware and drive data? I have done a lot of reading on forum.rpc1.org and forum.hddguru.com regarding this problem, but I'm still not sure what order to do things. Jumpering the drive into Safe Mode, loading a good loader file from somewhere, then what? Does "loader" and "firmware" refer to the same thing? Should I restore the original loader somehow? Do I need files exactly for 6E030L0510201 KGGA, or is 6E030L0###### good enough? Is a RAM file going to help me here? Do I need to load or repair any modules and in what order? Is Self Scan of any use?

Any helpful information for restoring the firmware and data will be much appreciated. The more details you can provide, the more we will all learn. Thanks!

For all the procedures that u have mentioned like LDR loading , selfscan etc u cannot use all these functions until u have tools like pc3000 if u need the data send it to a data recovery company and if u just need to repair hdd then throw it away and buy a new one bcz pc3000 or data recovery company charges would be very much for repairing one drive .

Does anyone have the LDR and RAM files for the 6E030L0 510201 AAA KGGA NAR61590? As a Computer Engineer, I would love to analyze the LDR and RAM code. Thanks in advance!

I can send you loader and RAM image but without tools like PC3000 and knowledge of firmware structure it's useless...

Hey Starling, could you please send me the loader and RAM image for my specific drive? Maybe post them on rapidshare or a similar filehost? Perhaps I can figure out a way to use the files, or at least I'll learn a little bit more about the drive's firmware structure. Thanks!