Looking for DR shop - need SA F/W fix on Maxtor Diamondmax 9

[stans_tx]

Hi Guys;

I've been lurking here as a guest for some time, and you guys have been very helpful for drive information.

Hopefully, I can return the favor to some small extent and offer someone a little work.

I have a Maxtor Diamondmax plus 9 that has died, and I'd like some of the data back.

The drive has the classic Maxtor slimline SA firmware corruption profile. It hung up in the middle of a big cache-swap going between two programs and has been hung ever since.

The drive is an old 80G IDE 6Y080L04, YAR41BW0, it was in an XP machine, and had two partitions, but I don't know what file system it used.

Bios finds it, and returns a size of 68G, but the operating system doesn't see it. It seems to be spinning fine. I have an identical drive and I've swapped out the controller boards, eliminating that as the problem.

I'm looking for a DR company to fix the SA firmware so I can unload a few CAD files that were created since the last backup.

I've talked to some companies in town, and the one that handled it also diagnosed it as a firmware corruption, but their repair bids are kind of ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an engineer myself, and I know this takes specialty skills and equipment, and you have to expect to pay people for their time, but, that being said, my local (Austin Texas) market seems to cater to the “government computer” and “legal retrieval” client and prices accordingly.

And frankly, even if I didn't have a good idea of the scope of the work, the data on this drive just isn't that valuable (it's essentially an archive of a delivered project)

So I'm looking for a DR shop (preferably somewhere near central Texas) to patch my firmware so that I can read out the drive (I know that I'll have bad sectors because I'll loose my G-list – I'll work with that) .

I know that some of you guys run shops that have been to this exact rodeo many times, and have a really good idea of the scope of work, so hopefully someone wants to give me a bid.

You can e-mail me at stans@flywom-dot-com.

Thanks.

[poehere]

The SA FW needs to be repaired and then the drive can be cloned to a new HDD. You G Lisr if reset will not effect your data and data loss on this HDD. If you lose your Plist that is another story all the way around. Someone here in your area I do not know anyone in Texas. But I do know someone in Florida if you are interested in sending your drive there. He can do this one for you on it. I could help you out on this one but will not even offer to do this one. I am way too far away and shipping to me is not even an issue on this one. I am sure we can find someone from here that is in the US to do this one for you.

Hey guys any suggestions for him on a person in or around Texas on this one. Lets help him out please.

[Steve]

I'm in Alabama.
Jono-Ats in in Atlanta Ga..
ThatDellGuy is in Cali.

Not sure on anyone in Texas

[dick]

This member is in Austin if that helps...........
member8199.html

[poehere]

BTW got some insite on this one. He had it at a DR company already and it has been analized as a head problems and not able to write to the SA. If this helps anyone out on this one. It is not a Glist problem as he is stating here on this one. Maybe this one can help when somene gives him a quote on this repair issue on his HDD.

[pcimage]

Hmm.

"Economical with the truth"??

[stans_tx]

>> BTW got some insite on this one. He had it at a DR company already and it has been analyzed as a head problems
>> and not able to write to the SA. If this helps anyone out on this one. It is not a Glist problem as he is stating here
>> on this one. Maybe this one can help when someone gives him a quote on this repair issue on his HDD.

I'm curious as to why you think it's a head problem.

I actually did have the drive at a local DR company, and it came back with a diagnosis of "severe firmware corruption", and the symptoms are pretty much consistant with what I've always been told that the infamous Maxtor G-list crash looks like.

They're actually a pretty big-league place (they do a lot of recoveries for the state agencies in town), so I would expect them to get the diagnosis right, (on the other hand, it also came back with a repair quote that seemed really high for an SA firmware fix) .

Do you have some particular reason to think it's worse than an SA corruption? Is there something else typical in the Maxtor's that you think this might be?

[jono-ats]

I've been struggling with a 300 GB Maxtor DiamondMax.

The firmware corrupts itself repeatedly. It has to be started with the loader, repaired, then imaged.

The curious thing is that it might go hundreds of millions of sectors just fine. But at the beginning of the drive, it corrupts rather quickly. I think it's a surface degradation issue. Because it has 6 heads, I am trying to get all I can before swapping the stack -- alignment on these multi-head units can be a bit tricky . . .

In more than a few instances, "just a case of firmware corruption" can be a pain, and justifies more than a trivial fee.

A few days ago a head swap resolved problems with a 6Y080L0. It was rather straight-forward.

I see quite a few bad Maxtor 80 GB drives -- probably more of that capacity than others.

[BlackST]

There's little to talk about and much more to do as these drives are the ABC of data recovery at least speaking for me and the seasoned pros : trust them and go or refer to someone else. I think the 'problem' is only related to the quote you had - either accept it and get your data back, or refer to someone else who gives you a better quote hoping there's nothing worse - should see the drive to diagnose.