Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6V200E0

Jamdav · 14 Jan 2006 at 00:31

I have recently purchased the following HDD from OCUK:
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6V200E0
I was hoping to use it with the mother board I currently have which is:
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi
I have the drive connected to the motherboard and in the BIOS I can view information about the drive - such as the capacity (203GB) and other info.

Despite the recognition by the BIOS I have a problem with the drive - when I place my Win XP Pro SP1 OS CD in my DVD-Drive I get the text:
"Please press enter to boot from CD"
When I do I get a blank screen and the HDD light is permanently on but there is no sound coming from the drive - and nothing happens.

I cannot install Win XP Pro with SP1 on my drive, and I have no floppy drive in my system.

Where have I gone wrong? Is the drive not compatible with my system?

Please help.
James

THEAVFCKID · 14 Jan 2006 at 00:36

I think you need to make a sata floppy boot disc.

Jamdav · 14 Jan 2006 at 00:38

Lack of floppy drive.

How could I do this using CD?

smids · 14 Jan 2006 at 00:41

Odd, which controller is the drive plugged into? Plug it into the nForce 4 controlled ports for ease of installation. See if that works. nF4 ports don't require any drivers.

Jamdav · 14 Jan 2006 at 23:45

It is in the nForce 4 port.
The drive is a SATA II drive which my brother says is for RAID only purposes - so therefore the drive I have bought won't work with my motherboard.
Is this bull?

Is it worth sending this back to OCUK - and will they accept it back (I havent even had it a week yet), and get a WD drive instead - or even an ATA drive?

smids · 14 Jan 2006 at 23:52

Jamdav said:
It is in the nForce 4 port.
The drive is a SATA II drive which my brother says is for RAID only purposes - so therefore the drive I have bought won't work with my motherboard.
Is this bull?

Is it worth sending this back to OCUK - and will they accept it back (I havent even had it a week yet), and get a WD drive instead - or even an ATA drive?

Your brother was indeed talking semi-bull. SATA-II is just an update of SATA one (added features). They come into their own with RAID because some have 300MB/s external transfer rate (when they are most useful) but to say that they are only good in a RAID is incorrect as there are more features to SATA-II than just 300MB/s external transfer over the old 150MB/s.

You should be able to send it back, either under Sale of Goods or Distance Selling Regs (though as you have used it, much harder, if not impossible). Problem being though, you don't know it is the drive at fault (knowing Maxtor, it probably is). You must exhaust all avenues before returning it. Having said that, it should run fine on the nF4 ports as they are SATA-II. It shows in BIOS so it is working to some extent...hmmm.....could be a firmware issue. Not a dodgy CD?

Jamdav · 14 Jan 2006 at 23:55

Tried multiple CD's.
Having spent nearly £800 with OCUK in the past month, surely they would let me send it back, I have spent hours trying to get the thing to work.

I'll try and see what I can do to either get it working or send it back, just one of those things I suppose.

smids · 15 Jan 2006 at 00:40

Jamdav said:
Tried multiple CD's.
Having spent nearly £800 with OCUK in the past month, surely they would let me send it back, I have spent hours trying to get the thing to work.

I'll try and see what I can do to either get it working or send it back, just one of those things I suppose.

Probably the HDU then. If you happen to sed it back, s14 of the Sale of Goods Act might come in handy

.

chaparral · 15 Jan 2006 at 01:29

You need window xp SP2 cd-rom.....sp1 cd-rom has not got the sata drivers.

smids · 15 Jan 2006 at 01:32

chaparral said:
You need window xp SP2 cd-rom.....sp1 cd-rom has not got the sata drivers.

As I said above, nForce4 controller does not require SATA drivers - it defaults to IDE mode until the drivers are installed in windows.

ed3203 · 26 Jan 2006 at 19:58

Hey same problem, curious to know what happened in the end. Will make a new topic with more information, but here's what i found..
maxline III 250gig
a8n-sli deluxe
There are a few variable bios settings like enabling Silicon Sata controller despite using the nForce sata ports.
There is also NVraid which can be enabled with specific ports ie SATA port 1.
Enabling all this lets you get past the black screen with 'detecting your computer settings' Then press f6 to load scsi drivers from the asus cd on a floppy i tried both the nvraid drivers and the silicon sata drivers, neither worked.
Let us know what happened
I'll start writting my own thread, maybe i could get some help, if anything it'll help clear my thoughts lol

Jamdav · 4 Feb 2006 at 14:26

I sent the drive back to OCUK, and got the same one back - but it looks like it gained a bit of soldering to the top of the drive, and has lost some of the casing (There is now a chip in the casing, whether this is due to transit or OCUK staff - I don't know).

Anyway, my brother noticed you can change the drive speed to 1.5Gbps using the jumpers so he did and shoved the drive in and it works. Perfectly. Except its not running at 3Gbps, but at a later date I might change the jumpers around and see what happens.

Windows XP Pro with SP1 is the OS in use, and everything is going swimmingly. Thanks for the advice,
James

VeNT · 4 Feb 2006 at 15:47

send it back to Maxtor?

Jamdav · 4 Feb 2006 at 16:09

Nope.

Back to Overclockers, got an RMA and the same drive (I think) sent out again.

smids · 4 Feb 2006 at 16:34

VeNT meant send it back to Maxtor using their advanced RMA service

. That way you can get a new drive which will hopefully run at the specs intended.