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[DocLotus]

HELP!!!

Anyone have any idea what's going on hear?

I sure hope someone knows as I can't get a straight answer from my local vendor.

I have five hard drives... all Maxtor's...

1 - 30 GB 2Mb cache
2 - 80 GB 2 Mb cache
2 - 120 GB 8 Mb cache

My problem is this...
The 30 & 80 GB drives test ok with all four of the disc testing utilities that I use.

I have gone through THREE 120GB drives & all of them report problems with all four disc utilities, however ChkDsk/F says the volume is clean.

Norton Disk Doctor will report bad Indexes one time but not the next.  The next time I test any of the 120GB drives Norton may then say there is a problem with the Security Descriptors - what the heck that is I don't know.  Norton will suggest I run Norton Disk Doctor and check the Fix Errors options which in turn reboots the computer & runs what looks like ChkDsk/F which will report that the volume is clean.  However I will run Norton again which reports the same errors.

Another disc test program (Fresh Diagnose) will report a Floating point overflow... Error Type is EOverflow.  For the Write speed Fresh Diagnose will report 33.15 MB/s.  For the Read speed it will report INF MB/s (should be close to the Write spped)..

The only thing that I can think of is that the new 120GB drives are VERY fast... Fresh reports 15.5 MB/s for the 80GB drives but 33.15 GB/s for the 120Gig drives.  I can confirm they are blindly fast as files & programs now seem to pop up super fast with the new drives.

The new drives also have 4 times the cache memory of the 80 Gig's (8MB vs. 2MB).  Can this be the culprit? Maybe the disc utilities are having a problem with the speed of the drives or the larger cache?

I have installed Win XP on two of the 120Gig drives with no other problems other then all disk utilities don't seem to like them.

The version of Norton SystemWorks I have is 2000 with all current updates.

I am running the latest version of Fresh Diagnose.

My utlities should not be having a problem with these drives (or are they?).

ANY IDEAS? Anyone?

[xen-uno]

Of the tests that you've done...there is only one that counts in my mind...MS's own chkdsk.

Are you having real read/write problems or are you just applying preventive maintenance? I would E-mail Symantec and give them your results...maybe they'll respond.

10^-27

edit: Looks to me like the other apps are having trouble with the size...does the system BIOS see the drive correctly as far as cylinders/heads/sectors/size are concerned?

[DocLotus]

BIOS sees the correct drive specs.

No other read write problems other then with the Disk utilities.

I always run them on any new drive to make sure they are ok but this one really stumps me ?

[xen-uno]

Yeah...strange

If you see any disk related errors in the System Log or the Application Log (see Event Viewer), then you may want to dig deeper. If not...forget about it.

10^-27

[KingSparta]

The version of Norton SystemWorks I have is 2000 with all current updates.

does Noton Disk Doctor 2000 handle 120 gig drives?

back about that time there was a 32-34gig limit

it may be too large for that version and would not use it. also speed disk may corrupt your data. you really should not use old utility programs to test with.

I would dup that old version.

norton 2004 should be out in sep-oct or so

[DocLotus]

Sorry... My Norton System Works is 2002 not 2000.  My mistake. Norton Speed disk works ok on one drive but not the other two.

Other disk utilities also report errors such as Fresh Diagnostic which is brand new latest version.  It will work correctly on one 120 Gig drive but not the other two.  It seems to come & go on all the drives.

[RemyJ]

How are the drives arranged on the IDE controllers?  Master/Slave, Primary/Secondary

Onboard controller or add-on?

40 wire or 80 wire cables?

Which DMA modes are the drives in?

[DocLotus]

All are IDE master with automatic recognization by the BIOS upon boot up.

IDE on the motherboard controller).

Also has on-board Promise RAID 0 & 1 but am currently not using that.

All DMA 133.

80 wire round hi-end cable.

One 120 gig is the Main Master (Drive C:\) & is internal in the computer case.

All other drives are Secondary Master (Drive D:\) via way of a mobile rack in one of my 5.25" drive bays.  That way I can swap out all my other drives as removable backups (no data ever lost here).