Western Digital and Maxtor Compatibility issues!

[Zelgadis]

Hello,

I bought about 7 months ago a WD 40 gig hdd. After having my IBM 30 gig drive crap out on me I managed to back my data to the new hdd I got for this purpose. I then grabed a maxtor 20 gig hard drive I own and installed linux on it and got my server back up and running. Well after a while I started noticing the same problems I was having with my IBM hard drive the maxtor of mine was starting to click when ever I booted my machine! I emmediatley changed my mother board. Earlier I thought I was my power supply because my IBM hdd would just stop running out of no where and then turn back on so I thought it was my Power supply.
Even After changing mobo's The Maxtor still continued to click on powering up and powering down the system. It lasted 7 month's that way and just died on me. I hooked my 40 gig up to another system of mine to get some data off it and this other system of mine is in perfect condition! After I hooked my WD up to this system I noticed that it had a Maxtor 40 gig hdd in it and after a few times of turning it back on I noticed that while performing a routine virus scan I heard the Maxtor shutdown and power back up like it lost power momentarily.
I have no viruses! What can my problem be? Is there a compatibility issue? Some one plz help!

[danimal1009]

This isn't really an answer to your question, but after my experiences with Maxtor hard drives, I've come to the conclusion that Maxtor is crap.

Last year and a half ago I bought a HP computer that had a Maxtor hard drive. Everything was fine... for 2 weeks. Then I got that stupid SMART error foretelling the imminent demise of my harddrive. Sure enough it went. Since it was still under warrenty I sent it back to HP to have it fixed... They replaced it with another Maxtor hd. Things were once again fine... for 3 months. Same deal happened again... I'm currently awaiting failure #3, and when it happens, I'm gonna cry.

Back on topic, though, your problems might stem from the fact that Maxtor hard drives are (in my opinion at least) inferior products.

[bsm2001]

are they on the same ide cable? I had a WD and maxtor on the same ide cable and bad performance changed the wd to different ide and things improved radically for some reason I figure that wd and max on same cable not good. I now have two maxtors one 120gb 2 mo the other 40gb 6 yrs old. no problems and even droped the 40 twice.

[EnigmaOne]

Hmmmm......
Your statements are very atypical of my experiences with Maxtor drives.

Don't take this as vitriol, but Western Digital drives, on the other hand, have to be the weirdest hard drive creatures on the planet.
Non-standard jumpering and they seem to hate coexisting with another drive in the system. If I'm going to run a WD for its very short life, I run it as a single master, with no other IDE HDDs in the system on any channel--otherwise there will be problems eventually.

Your other system that has the Maxtor drive in it was functioning fine until you installed the WD drive with it; which should tell you something right-off:
"...this other system of mine is in perfect condition! After I hooked my WD up to this system I noticed that it had a Maxtor 40 gig hdd in it and after a few times of turning it back on I noticed that while performing a routine virus scan I heard the Maxtor shutdown and power back up like it lost power momentarily."

Check your jumpering on the WD drive very completely and carefully against WD's published specs. All the drive jumpers, not just M/S/CS. Disable any spindle sync control.

I can't speak to the clicking issue you seem to be experiencing, as I've never had a Maxtor with that kind of failure mode (out of something like a couple thousand installed over the years), but I'd be willing to bet that your current problems are due more to a WD issue than anything to do with the Maxtor drive.
I'd remove the WD if I were you, and run it solo in another box.

As a curious afterthought...did you ever replace the P/S on the machine that had problems with the IBM drive?

[EnigmaOne]

Originally posted by bsm2001
I figure that wd and max on same cable not good.

In all seriousness, a good rule-of-thumb would be nothing on the same cable with a WD.

Seagate, IBM and Quantum on the same cable with a Maxtor drive all run fine for years.
Toss a WD on the same cable with any of them and you'll see some major weirdness; some of which you can jumper around, and some wherein the attempt will do you no good at all.
There are systems that I've run into don't like WDs mixed with anything else on any channel--even other WDs.

All in all, if you have to run two drives, it's just less trouble to scrap any WD drive and go with something else.

[Zelgadis]

EnigmaOne first yes on the machine that had the IBM in it I did replace the p/s.

As for the clicking it usually stands for the servo dying or is dead which is what happened to the IBM, and the Maxtor. Also yeah to a point I beleive Maxtor's are crap seeing as of how I used to run a 486 as a mail server with a 2.6 gig Maxtor that died on me. The problem, the servo died! That was 8 month's before the IBM! The two hdd's weren't ever in the same computer. But what happened to the Maxtor that died on me... I took it to my welding class and melted it into a pile of smoldering aluminium, silicon, and ciruit board.

I had at first like you said the Maxtor and the WD on different chains the Maxtor the primary and the WD on the slave with my cd-rom. After 2 weeks that way the WD and the cd-rom were being detected weird by the bios, what I mean is the bios wouldn't say the name of the drive but a bunch of weird character's. When I would unplug either the cd-rom or the WD it would go back to normal. But there was still some reading prob's witht the WD on the comp with the Maxtor when the cd-rom was out so I then took the Maxtor out and the cd-rom and the WD worked fine!?

Weird, huh? Anyway's I'm gonna give the WD back to my dad when I get my IBM back just got enough money to RMA it :) .

[bwkaz]

And I've been able to run a Maxtor 20GB with a WD 30GB in the same box (on the same chain; the Maxtor was the master with the WD the slave) for the last three -- almost four, now -- years with no problems.

I really think your luck with various drive brands depends on the batch that your specific drives come from...

[Zelgadis]

well I'm to get a RMA for my IBM finally and I'm gonna move all my data to it and use it as my server's data drive and the WD as my gaming computer's drive.