Power Fluctuation In Building caused 8 Maxtor Plus hard drives to become unreadable but only if they were restarted. (Some workstations were not restarted for several days and the symptoms did not show until after the restart several days later).
1). Maxtor diagnostics Advanced Tests:
Soft reset passed
Drive recal passed
Drive identify passed
Drive R/W passed
Smart enable failed
Receive Warning ? errors have been detected on your drive
Repairing drive passed
2). Maxtor diagnostics Installation Confirmation
Power connection passed
Interface cable connection passed
Master / Slave jumpers passed
BIOS extension support passed
Partition Information Read / Fail
Smart enable function failed
Starting at step 1 again gives exact same results over and over again
Hard drive can be recovered with Maxtor Diagnostic disk low level utility but this destroys data and I need to keep the option to recover open. No screeching or squealing coming from hard drives.
Sending hard drive to recovery company not an option.
Tried changing the controller board on hard drive with known good one – Did not work
BIOS – Recognizes hard drive but FDISK returns error of no fixed disk present.
Post sequence ? No setup info on screen goes directly to ?F1 to retry boot or F2 for setup?
Tried having hard drive as slave – No slave present. Windows 2000 does not see it
Tried having same type of drive known to be good and hot swapping with faulty – Workstation hangs.
Tried freezing hard drive – Did not work
Tried banging hard drive – Did not work
Data Recovery software – Did not work because drive not recognized at Post
Cannot reload OS – Drive not recognized at Post