BIOS Reports faulty Hard Drive

mickb · 5th April 2004

I have installed a Maxtor 60 GB Hard Drive as a 2nd Drive into my New HP Pavilion t461 PC the BIOS (American Megatrends) reports the following

PRI SLAVE: maxtor 5T060H6 TAH71DP0 Ultra DMA Mode 5, S.M.A.R.T Capable and Status BAD

I can then access the Settings (F1) or Continue to load the OS (F2) So from this we could say the Drive is faulty, however in Windows XP the Drive is fine, an behaves okay.

As an additional test I have used the PowerMax V4.09 Utility from the Maxtor web site to scan all the sectors for any problems, the results where "No reported errors Found"

The problem is the BIOS is reporting a faulty drive, and doesn't seem to be, or is it ? Before I use the Drive in anger (To be used for Video capture) I need to clarify the situation.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mick Bristow

**PeteC** · 5th April 2004

Mick

Go into BIOS and make sure SMART monitoring is enabled on that drive.

Then download Aida32 - link in my sig. below - run it and go to Storage > SMART and see what it says there.

mickb · 5th April 2004

Pete

This is an extract from the output for the offending drive

0A Spin Retry Count 223 217 181
26 Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is being predicted

Looks like the Drive is just waiting to fail, can this problem be corrected, or is down to the shops for a new one......................

Thanks

Mick

**PeteC** · 5th April 2004

Quote:

down to the shops for a new one......................

Not too sure - bit strange this - SMART says 'you have a problem' - Powermax says 'you don't'. I guess it's your call

I can't advise one way or the other - depends on how important your video capture is to you. Give it a try.

Hopefully some other opinions on this will be forthcoming before you make that trip!

**mattman** · 6th April 2004

Hi Mick

Just in case it's a glitch in the BIOS reading the SMART information, I would disable SMART in the BIOS settings. Boot up. You can check Aida32 with SMART disabled (it reads mine when it is disabled). Restart, enable it and check it again.

I would look at replacing it if still showed a fault, but contact Maxtor support first. You may wait weeks for it to come back, only to find that they tested it with Powermax and couldn't find a problem. They may also suggest something like a BIOS upgrade for your motherboard in case the problem may be there.

Matt

mickb · 6th April 2004

Thanks to Pete and Matt for there valued input, having done the additional testing, it makes sense to replace the drive.

Thanks once again.............

Mick