I have a maxtor 541DX 5400 RPM 20 GB hard drive, wich on its label says "model = 2B020H1", and in the PCB says "ATHENA ATA2 PLUS"... the problem is that suddenly, it start to recognize the hard drive like Maxtor Athena, and the POST screen shows an error message like "primary master error" or something like that... no power fails happend, no crashing, no falling on the floor, no bad sectors problem, no viruses... nothing at all. but it suddenly stopped working... is there anyway to fix the hard disk? i don't care a bout the data inside because i have another HD that I use for documents, will a low level fomat solve the problem? or it's a firmware problem?, where can i find the firmware of this (and other) hard drives? how to flash it? thanks for your help...

It's hard to understand your question. I'll need more info....You have your drive hooked up to your primary ide controller right and the jumper is set on master right? You turn on the computer and enter the bios setup screen right? You go to auto detect hard drive and what does it do then? Does it detect the drive and the correct size? What does it say?





There is no flashing firmware on disk drive. Low Level Format.

Hi Julio

Try one of these from Maxtor.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

Jim

hello. i also have the same type of hd and the exact problem. i hope powermax and maxblast3 can fix the problem. i am downloading it and will try to fix my hd later. thanks.

ok. i have downloaded and tried powermax and maxblast3 but the problem remains. the hd is still not detected. need more suggestions please. thanks.

You don't need your drive partitioned or formatted for your bios to recognize the hard drive. If your bios doesn't see it the it is jumpered wrong, cabled wrong, the controller is disabled or not working or it doesn't have power. All the utilities in the world won't do a thing to get the bios to see the drive. If your bios doesn't see it, check those four things, (jumper,cable,controller and power). If your drive is recognized then the tools that the manufacturer provides should be able to repair the boot sector and master boot record or tell you if it's damaged.

ok. but the four things you said i should check are all working because i tried using a seagate hd on that same unit and it worked just fine. i also connected the maxtor hd to the computer where i took the seagate hd and again it was not detected by powermax and maxblast3.

There could be a few reasons why one drive would work and another wouldn't.

1) the drive could be dead.

2) the drive may be too large in size and the bios doesn't recognize it (use a different controller or pos bios flash)

3) the jumper could still be wrong, make sure you look carefully single drive should be master or cselect.

4) if the drive is partitioned wrong you could have problems, old fdisk only work properly on disks up to something like 40 or 60GB so lets say an 80gb drive will be detected in the bios at some weird size. If this is the case you have to repartition the drive with powermax3.

5) if the drive had win2k or win xp installed then crapped out, try booting form the XP cd and choose the recovery console then at the command prompt type: fixboot hit enter , then type: fixmbr hit enter then type: chkdsk /x /r hit enter to find and fix data errors. Reboot when all that is done.

ok. im going to try that next. thanks for the tips.

My 541DX just went Athena yesterday evening.
I've just played some games on my PC a few hours, and then I turned it off.
Half an hour later I turned it on again, and the 'primary slave hard disk fail' message shown on the POST screen.
What happened? Cos I've done nothing on my hardware that day.
Thankfully I've installed the Maxtor as pri slave, so my Win98 on Seagate still working just fine.
Sadly My WinXP(NTFS) is installed on that Maxtor, so I can no longer access it.

Can someone tell me why this thing suddenly happened?

These the problems seem to be a regular occurance with XP. Most likely the master boot record on the boot sector are getting corrupted. The instructions above will repair this problem (boot from XP CD and run the commands from the prompt).

Thanks for the tips.
I'll try the WinXP CD solution first.
And PowerMax solution later (I hope I don't have to do it)
I've installed Norton Antivirus 2002 on the WinXP. Usually any attempt to change the MBR will be warned by NAV. Then why that change slips out the guard?

NAV shouldn't load because you booted from the CD. When windows boots NAV may warn you of changes but if that happens just click ignore or allow change.

It seems weird that 3 different people are having the same problem at the same time. And with the same product. Sounds like virus or some such nasty to me. Try to rebuild your boot.ini files

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184&Product=winxp

Hi it's me again, the DX-went-Athena-by-WinXP HDD owner.

I've tried the solution by Recovery Console on XP CD, but it didn't work at all.
The console says it did not find any HD attached on PC.
(No drive to be selected for recovery)
Of course it is, because the BIOS doesn't recognize the HD properly.

So I switched to 2nd option: using Powermax to Formatting the HDD.
And the Powermax reads my DX541 as Athena.
The Tests are :
-Basic Quick Test
-Full Scan test
-Low-Level Format (Quick)
-Low-Level Format (Full)
I've done all the test, none of them have effect (still Athena).
Instead it generates some error code (sorry I forgot to write down the code, 0000 00f7 or so).

So there it is, the 20-gigs HDD lays useless in my desk.

If anyone have other solution, please let me know.
Thanks for your attention.

It started today. A client called. A 20Gig Maxtor Hard Disk that has been working pretty well for over two years now, is not recognized anymore by the OS or the BIOS. Well it's hard to say because the BIOS "seems" to recognize it as ATHENA on the POST but after that step, an error message states that the "primary master hard disk" fails... Hummm...

When I access the BIOS by pressing F1 on the POST, it is recognized correctly but with ATHENA as the type instead of 2B020H1.

After, when the system tries to boot, it says None besides Primary Master Disk Type. And no utility will recognize the drive. Even FDISK launched from the A: drive yields "No Fixed Disk Present".

The system was running Windows98 SE with no major hardware change for at least one year...

I have seen enough Maxtor Hard Disk fail right after the 3 year warranty period that I have stopped counting them. I don't know but from personal experience, I have to say that it's propostrous. Luckilly for me, the manufacturing date of this one is October 2001, so if I can't get this one back up, you can bet that I will get a RMA and send it back this week.

You probably did a good thing by not using a Maxtor hard disk as your primary drive in your multi boot config Arive Bee. I personally stopped buying Maxtor drives because a lot of these drives would fail in the month following the "3 years" warranty period. And then, what do you do?

So right now, I am inclined to say it's a hardware faillure pure and simple but I will investigate the idea of some kind of boot virus as you stated Payton Chacalos. I will keep you posted on the solution as it becomes available.

Well, I've seen enough!. I removed the drive from the system and accessed the Maxtor Site for warranty service to get a RMA number. That's it! This drive is going back to Maxtor.

Here is the link for Warranty service for all you lucky ones inside the 3-years period:

https://www4.maxtor.com/en/support/service/rma/create/

(You go thru all 8 steps by filling in the information and by clicking the hiddy bitty tiny little "next" button at the bottom of each page)

Good luck...

This is why I buy WDC drives...

Yep! Definitely! Western Digital makes good drives. I did have to return a faulty drive under warranty, but hey! What is ONE drive on the couple hundred I have in the field... Yes I personally use Western Digital for my data and PC's.

But Maxtor? Hell I have to say honnestly that everytime a PC comes back to me after a couple of years, either for service or maintenance, if the hard disk drive is a Maxtor, I am afraid to look at the manufacturing date on the drive... I'm afraid to have to say to the customer: "expect your drive to die, very soon..."

Cheers,

I think those costumers out there need to know the truth, so why should be afraid to tell 'em.
Maybe then Maxtor will realize their mistakes, and try harder to make a better HDD for all of us.
(sounds like dream, isn't it..)

Btw Sergio, in most cases you've found Maxtor Failure, does they came from the same model (such as mine - 541DX), or there is another model which suffer the same problem?

Thinking positively, maybe the failure only happen to low-end products. As for high-end HDD, they are more reliable (because they are more expensive?).

Until the dream comes true, I think I'll avoid any Maxtor product from now on.

Hate to spoil your Maxtor bashing party, but after buying a WD and seeing how slow it was compared to my Maxtor, I took it back after 2 days and replaced it with a second Maxtor. You guys are soooo funny. You'll replace your graphics card every 6 months, but cry if your hard drive doesn't last 3 years? LOL Thanks. I'll take the speed over the longevity any day. Oh by the way even though it is an ATA/133 drive, it was only running at ATA/100 with my 875P chipset.

Julio maybe that 5400RPM drive just got senile and forgot what it was? LOL