Hi Guru's

I am an IT professional with many many years of hardware and software experience, I cut my teeth on Commodore 64's and 386's and know my way around all manner of CLI's - just to set the tone (although I know "professional's" can be more trouble than the novice when it comes to listening to advice ).

As in the subject, I have a Maxtor 4D080H4 which has failed gracefully with a SMART error on BIOS startup. It was spinning up fine, and didn't make any untoward noises. It is mostly backed up, so I am not really looking for a solution that costs money - more of a test of my skills (as I like to repair stuff myself!).

I bought an identical Maxtor 4D080H4, but before I try anything like a PCB swap I thought I would look for advice! This drive seems notorious for SMART failures, but it looks like it stores drive information on the platter - is it something a data recovery novice should attempt?

Worse case scenario - I will lose a few family photos and some "adult" material

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Paul

A "SMART failure" is not necessarily an actual failure. It just means that one or more SMART attributes have exceeded their threshold values. The data should still be accessible.

Could we see a SMART report from a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi fzabkar - thanks for the response!

Wasn't aware of CrystalDiskInfo - have downloaded and run a report on the disk. It reports the disk as "unknown" and doesn't run reports (unlike the one that works) - is there a way to get around this problem, or is it because of the version of CrystalDiskInfo I am using (6.5.2)?

Here is a screenshot:


Here is a healthy(ish) one:


I don't mind that I have shared the serial numbers of my disks - I think they are well out of warranty now

Paul

Just to add to the previous post that is awaiting moderation, I have tested the drive using SeaTools and a short DST passed.


Both a long and short generic test fails.


Not sure if this helps at all - anything else I can try?

Thanks in advance.

Paul

fzabkar already told you

I don't know whether this tool is safe, but you could try clearing the drive's SMART module:

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=324

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply! I can do quotes too jermy, but they don't add much value to the post for future readers

Yes, I doubt it is cost effective for me to purchase a PC-3000 UDMA or HRT-DRE and still break the drive Spildit - but thanks for making me aware of them, and your comprehensive reply!

Is it a service anyone on here offers to do - and what would success look like, could the filestructure be restored intact, or would it be just a USB stick of files recovered! Like I say, I'm not interested in a vast amount of the data - but the organisation / quantity of some of the family photos is different from my backups (the cheap Chinese USB stick I used for the last backup had misreported its size, and it was an incomplete backup!).

I've downloaded HDD Repair 2.0 and get a "Command timeout" for the damaged drive D404GJ4E - the other ones report ok:


All ports (in case I have picked the wrong port):
http://www.eciti.co.uk/assets/images/1F0H.jpg
http://www.eciti.co.uk/assets/images/170H.jpg
http://www.eciti.co.uk/assets/images/100H.jpg

I didn't press anything else, as I didn't want to brick it and make further diagnosis impossible! This advice is invaluable for me, even if I can't recover anything I will know for the future! The ideal would be just getting the drive working long enough to copy some of the data off (isn't it always!)

Paul

Sorry, I think the Seagate master was throwing out the details of the Maxtors - here is the actual output of the device with serial D404GJ4E:


If I attempt to rescan drives using the built in XP disk management, it flashes red on ERR and ABRT

Is there a defined process for clearing the drives SMART module?

Thanks

Paul

PM Sent

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Thanks again for the expansive reply Spildit, it sounds like you have (bad) experience of this software - so I won't do any more exploration with it. It's a DSP chipset, but your 100% failure rate using this free software is enough to confirm that you only get what you pay for

A member on here has offered to attempt recovery for a reasonable rate, so I'm going to take that offer rather than make data recovery by a professional harder!

Haven't had many total losses in my 20+ years in IT, but it does always seem to be a Maxtor when it does go wrong

Paul