HDAT2 forum

Hello,

This is a newbie's question. Please be patient

I have a Maxtor 541DX 20GB which detected by BIOS as "Maxtor Athena", and show hard disk fail message at POST. The partitions are not recognized by OS. I have valuable data in it so I use HDAT2 v4.04.01 to make it readable to run recovery programs.

HDAT2 tells me the status of the drive :

!SET MAX: HPA_IS_ACTIVE
!DCO: FROZEN

Like in the manual, I turn off the cpu power. I remove the data cable, turn cpu on, boot into Win98 DOS (press F8 at startup), attach the data cable, then I run HDAT2. The problems are:

- HDAT2 still says that DCO is frozen.
- When I try Set Max HPA | Set Max Address, HDAT2 says "Error reading Native Max Address".
- When I try Drive Level Tests Menu | Check bad sectors only, HDAT2 crashes

Is my hard disk hopeless? Or maybe you can give me hints?

Thank you in advance.

JRP

Hi,

I think you have a firmware bug, you can download a freeware HDD Firmware Repairer 2.0 and repair it.
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Disk_Maintenance_and_Repair_Utilities/HDD_Firmware_Repairer.html

I hope it will work.

Thank you! I'll download it right away.

By the way, do you have any plan to make HDAT2 have the features to fix/write hard disk firmwares?

JRP

Hi,

I'd like to know how to do it.

But i don't know, sorry.

Hello,

I have tried HDD Firmware Repairer. I followed the instructions carefully. While repairing it said that table 3 had errors and repaired, other tables were OK. The next cold boot after the repair finished make me happy : The name of detected HD have restored, no more Maxtor Athena!

but...

The boot did not complete. After waited a few minutes, I reboot again. The boot was complete this time, but with Maxtor Athena again.

I repeated the whole repair process a few times again, but everything stayed the same. Almost always HDD Firmware Repairer said that all tables had errors & repaired. It also crashed 2 times while checking table 4.

The repair failed but, well, probably it was just my bad luck. If you have another ideas I can try at home, please let me know.

Thank you anyway!

JRP

Hello,

I don't have any other ideas, you can send it to specialized company to repair this HDD or buy another one

You can find and use a software PC3000 (not free) for repairing, i don't have it and have never used it. But i think this SW can help you.

I'm sorry i cannot help you more.

Best regards.

hi,
- use full program not demo.