Delay Write Failed - ALL Maxtor SATA's with P4S800-E Deluxe

[fluffedup]

thanks a lot.... in my experience, the Western Digitals that I have are considerably louder. Like night and day compared to the Maxtor's.

Thanks,
Dan

[CrowdAds]

[bal_abx]

I would concur with that. I did the following:

1. Put the JD and PD variant WD drives next to each other. Both have a high-pitched whine.
2. Used the Hitachi tool to turn on Acoustic Management, but this did nothing for the whine.
3. Put the WD PD drive next to the Maxtor. The Maxtor spins without a high-pitched whine.

Note that I disabled every fan in my system to conduct this (rapid) test.
With the fan noise, it isn't going to make any difference for me, but in a quiet HTPC, it has to be a Maxtor (assuming it works with the motherboard )

[fluffedup]

Thanks a lot. Provided this situation [whatever the culprit is...drivers, disks, chipset? who knows at this point] doesn't get straightened out by the end of the month, I'll probably cut my losses and replace the Maxtor with a different brand. I've read that the Seagate 7200.7's SATA are even quieter than the Maxtors [granted, the difference between almost silent and near almost silent is inconsequentially small]. I think [don't quote me on this] that the Maxtor drives offer a bit of a performance advantage over the Seagate drives [the Storagereview write-up, I think...maybe not]. I'd just hesitate to replace the very quiet Maxtor with a comparably loud Western Digital.

It's just unfortunate that it might be the only possible solution to this problem....having to get a new drive and all.


Thanks,
Dan

[bal_abx]

fluffedup - has anyone successfully got a Seagate to work? I imagine the answer is yes or we'd have a "Seagate drives don't work with P4S800-E Deluxe" thread, but I've been so focused on the Maxtor that I have ignored any references to other manufacturers...
My supplier carries Seagates at the same price as the Maxtors and WDs at around $10 less. However, I don't really want to be a Seagate guinea pig.

[fluffedup]

A bit about Seagate drives
from http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/...800de(3).shtml
by Dave Altavilla

"The Seagate Barracuda V 120G SATA drives we ultimately ended up testing with, were significantly more cooperative [than the Maxtors] with the SiS SATA controllers but not completely glitchless either. While we could get one drive up on either the 964 Southbridge channel or the SiS180 controller channel, we couldn't get the two drives to peacefully coexist on one controller, in single drive mode. As such, our hard disk testing was done with the OS drive on one controller and another blank drive on the second SATA controller. In an effort to bring you this article in a timely fashion, we had to forego SATA RAID testing all together. The SiS SATA drivers seemed to be the culprit more than anything else, since more often than not, our issues were manifest during installation just as the SATA drivers were being installed. So it seems, Asus and SiS have some work to do, in the area of SATA drive compatibility, which interestingly enough was something we also experienced with our recent VIA PT880 reference motherboard testing. "
[end of quote]

I think the Baracuda V is an older SATA model though. The 7200.7's are the new Seagates. The HardOCP review used a combination of PATA Maxtors [40GB] and SATA Seagate 7200.7's [80GB]. They don't mention any problems.

I'll give SiS another couple weeks to release new drivers [which would hopefully fix the problem....of course no one is entirely sure that they are the problem] but after that, it won't be worth the aggravation of dealing with a semi-working computer, and I'll move to sell the SATA Maxtor to replace it with another brand...Seagate, maybe.

Dan

[fireball_abx]

Originally posted by bal
fluffedup - has anyone successfully got a Seagate to work? I imagine the answer is yes or we'd have a "Seagate drives don't work with P4S800-E Deluxe" thread, but I've been so focused on the Maxtor that I have ignored any references to other manufacturers...
My supplier carries Seagates at the same price as the Maxtors and WDs at around $10 less. However, I don't really want to be a Seagate guinea pig.

I have 2 Seagate 80G SATA drives running in Raid 0 without any problem so far.

[dtgrafx]

Howdy fellaz

I've been on another forum with Stoneh disscussing this friggin problem with no luck. Below is what Maxtor sent me:

My setup BTW is as follows:
- Asus P4S800D E-Deluxe (SiS 655TX chipset)
- ATI RADEON 9800PRO 128MB
- 2 X 512 Kingston DDR PC3200
- Intel 3.2GHz P4
- Western Digital 37GB 10,000RPM SATA HD (MASTER on SATA1)
- Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM SATA HD (SLAVE on SATA2)
- Sony 16X DVD-ROM Drive
- Sony DVD+/-RW Drive

Dear Jorge Villanueva:
Try the following steps:

1. Make sure it is in NTFS format. If it is not go to http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;313348 to have instructions on how to partition and format the drive.

2. Do the following steps:

1. Access Disk Management.
2. Locate the drive listing in the top right-hand window. Right-click on the drive and select Change Drive Letter and Path.
3. A new window appears. Select the drive again and click Edit or Change.
4. DO NOT make any changes. Click OK or Cancel.
5. Locate the drive in the bottom right-hand window of Disk Management (this is a graphical representation of the drives in your system).
6. Right-click on the drive and again choose Change Drive Letter and Path and then exit the window.
7. After you have completed steps 1-6 for each device listed in Disk Management, restart the system.

3. If that does not work go to http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;330174 and do this document.

4. Run powermax software http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

If you have any further questions please feel free to email or call us. Maxtor technical support center agents are available to assist you 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM MST, Monday - Friday at 1-800-2MAXTOR.

Thank you,
TSKeith89

1-(800)-2-MAXTOR (voice)
353 1 204 1111 (International)
http://www.Maxtor.com (web)
http://www.MaxStore.com (shop)

This fix didn't work for me

[VSEKH]

I checked on SIS' website for contact information. They said to contact the motherboard manufacturer for support. Looks like we need to contact Asus for support on this issue. Stoneh already contact Asus support. Not sure if he has heard back from Asus support.

I believe the problem is not with the Maxtor hard drive, but with the SIS SATA raid driver since the drive does not work on the SIS964 SATA or SIS180 SATA raid controllers.

[bal_abx]

I updated my case with ASUS with links to my posts here.

[VSEKH]

Originally posted by bal
I updated my case with ASUS with links to my posts here.

I'm gonna have my friend open a case with Asus support if he gets anymore bluescreens.

[bal_abx]

Originally posted by fireball
I have 2 Seagate 80G SATA drives running in Raid 0 without any problem so far.

Are these the newer 7200.7 variants such as the ST3160023AS (that's a 160GB version)?

[fluffedup]

About the Maxtor support stuff....

I called last week sometime, and they didn't give me the whole thing in disk manager that they did for you, but they did say to run Powermax. BUT, the current version of Powermax doesn't work with the chipset. You can't select the drives in the SATA ports. BIOS sees them and everything, but it looks like powermax only supports up to the SiS963 southbridge at this point. I'd assume that eventually they'll support the 964, but when I tried it, it didn't. Being that powermax pretty much just tests the disc [I think], I'm not sure how much is to be gained, especially considering that a number of us have this problem and the likelihood that it all stems from faulty drives is probably small. I'm sure that running powermax is just the default support procedure for things at Maxtor that aren't brutally obvious. Maybe you guys had different luck getting it to run, but I had none.

On top of that, if you use a program such as partition commander, which doesn't involve itself with the Windows drivers (or any aspect of Windows) when you boot from the partition commander CD, it works perfectly fine when copying to or from the SATA drive. I'm very sure it's the Windows drivers.

Thanks,
Dan

[dtgrafx]

I've given up on the Maxtor drive and requested an RMA and ordered another WD drive!

[Stoneh]

Still awaiting reply from SiS, Maxtor and ASUS. SiS and Maxtor got back to me asking for more information, nothing from Asus.

Just to confirm the WD SATA drive has been working nicely and hasnt given me any probs at all. Keep trying guys, could do with a nice 5 star rating for this thread :P

On a light note please keep this thread specific to the subject, else we could end up with lots of irrelevant posts .

[bal_abx]

For US readers:
Happened to be in the local CompUSA (Dublin Pleasanton, California) looking for a SATA cable and found Seagate ST3160023AS 160GB SATA drive for $99 after rebates ($20 instant and $50 mail in).
Here is the link: http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...903&pfp=BROWSE

This is the full retail box, so that's the lowest price that I've found anywhere.

The catch is that it is one rebate per household.