hard disk troubleshooting

If your system hangs or locks up during the boot process after installing your new Maxtor Hard drive, either before or after setting the system BIOS, this indicates a jumper conflict with another device on the cable or a BIOS capacity barrier.

If this happens, please perform the following:

1. Turn the system off.
2. If the drive is on the cable with another device disconnect both devices from the cable. You will need to test the Maxtor drive as a “stand-alone unit” on the cable. Install a jumper on the cylinder limit / alternate capacity jumper, reconnect the ATA and power cables and restart the system.
3. If the BIOS is set to AUTO-DETECT and the drive is now detecting without hanging the system, proceed with partitioning and formatting the drive with the MaxBlast software*. The device you removed from the cable in step 2 can now be reinstalled on the ATA cable. If the system continues to hang after reinstalling the second device, you will need to verify its jumper settings or place it as a stand-alone device on the secondary ATA port.
4. If the system is still hanging after installation of the cylinder limit / alternate capacity jumper, you will need to try the user-definable option in the BIOS setup utility. Power the system off and disconnect the 40-pin ribbon cable from the drive (this will prevent the system from hanging while performing the next step).
5. Restart the system and enter the BIOS setup utility, set the BIOS parameters to a User Definable Type with 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors, and set the LBA mode to normal or standard. Ignore the Write Pre Comp (WpCom) and Landing Zone (LZ) settings (they can be set to zero). Save settings, exit setup, and power system off.
6. Reconnect the cables and power the system on. If the system no longer hangs, proceed with partitioning and formatting the drive with the MaxBlast software*.
7. If you tried all the above steps and are still experiencing problems, the only options left are contacting your motherboard manufacturer for a BIOS Upgrade, or purchase an ATA controller card.