Hi, I bought a maxtor 160 gig HD about a week ago, and I am having a problem with it. The problem is that every now and then some times after 2 days or 3 days when I turn on my pc the HD would not be detected, I would have to hit reset button until its detected or I would have to unplug the IDE cable and reconnect it. Its connected as a master (no other HD is on the cable) on the secondary (IDE2) channel of a maxtor pci ATA-133 controller card. I have another 2 hd connected to the primary (IDE1) so I switched the channels to see if maybe the secondary channel was having problems but its not I am having the same problem with the maxtor now on hte primary channel (IDE1) and the other 2 HDs that are now on the secondary channels work perfectly, so figure its not the channels, but maybe this HD has a prob with this PCI controller. Is any one else having or have had this problem? Any comments suggestions are welcomed.

Most of these controller cards will only work properly with paired units, and hard drives only. I would strongly recommend checking out their website for further information. I also use a PCI IDE card with UDMA 133 capability. There is no mention of unit counts in the manual, but their website if full of you-should-only-use-this-card-with-the-following-configurations type stuff. The main limitation is that whatever I put on channel 0, I must duplicate on channel 1, they must be paired in size, performance and buffer size but don't have to be same make and model.

I have the same drive and was having the same exact promblem. I changed my ATA controller from the stock Maxtor one to a Promise TX2 133. It works like a charm now. Try switching the ATA card. They are cheap anyway. Won't break the bank at all.

*EDIT* - http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productI...familyId=3