I have a Maxtor DiamodMax plus 8 20 GB HDD on hand with very important Office Data that i would like to recover. The hdd was working perfectly until yesterday morning when it slowed down and on rebooting i ended up with a disk failure. The mobo still detects the HDD as N40P.

I have ran the Maxtor diagnostic tool - seatools and it detected the hdd as a 40GB and on running a 'L' long and 'S' Short test ... i endup getting an error.

"Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV"

Reading further regarding this problem, it seems like a firmware problem. I have called Seagate asking for a firmware for this particular model.. but they don't seem to have any firmware updated for it.

HDD Specs:

DiamondMax Plus 8
capacity 20GB
Code: NAR61590
LBA: 40718160
6E020L510231-ABA-KGGA-B4FEA

I was thinking of getting a similar drive for replacing the PCB board as a possible fix to retrieve the data. But so far i have had no luck. I have found similar capacity HDD but with different board B8FEA which probably wont work.

Therefore i come to you guys for help ... i have couple of questions
- would i be able to use a 40gb capacity HDD with the same board "B4FEA" ?
- if not, can i use a different board (B8FEA) but with the same specs and model HDD ?
- or can i find a firmware from somewhere that could possibly fix this problem ?

Any sort of help will be appreciated guys!

It's not the PCB board.

This is classic firmware failure.

Fixable with PC3000 / Salvation.

Unfortunately NOT fixable with free software.

If you stand any chance of getting your data, do not use the drive any more, and get it into a DR company.

As you're in Canada, I'm sure Starling can help u out?

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I have a Mxtor Diamond 8 Plus 20GB

6E020L 0510605
NAR61590
KMGA
SN: E1D5KSBE

Does anyone have the firmware or the loader file for this drive.

Thank you.

FelixRuiz, if you have PC3000 then you should have a big database with compatible loaders and firmware that comes with it.
If you don't have PC3000 you can't load loaders and write firmware, so you don't actually need this.

netio, it's not a PCB problem, but just to make sure you can try to swap the board from your bad drive to a good drive to see that it works good. You can try different capacities - it won't hurt.
If your drive is not clicking or beeping on startup then most likely it's a firmware problem and needs special expensive tools. Firmware is located on the platters, not on the PCB - that's why PCB swap won't help here.

I am actually using HDD Doctor For Maxtor By Salvation Data. Any Help?