Hardware Analysis - Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

nev sutton — 2008-09-09T00:50:44-05:00

Intresting thing is I tryed again (for the hundredth time) but forget to disconnect the drive.
Booted up and it ran
But hung on the Checking table 4 screen

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

nev sutton — 2008-09-06T14:45:55-05:00

I have the same problem as David the thing hangs on the T&C page and wont go any further

I'm under the impression that its the floppy so I would like to try the CD version
But theres my problem Salvation are no longer supplying this software.
(would even email me a copy)

So can someone supply me with the CD version or help me figure out how you stop the pgm from hanging.

OR is there another program that will do this fix

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Sergio Momesso — 2008-06-20T12:56:15-05:00

To be able to boot from a CD drive, your media needs to be written in a "certain way". Just making a CD from an .ISO file does not guarantee a succesfull boot.

In order to boot, all three following components need to conform to the El Torito specification: the BIOS, the drive and the media. See Wikipedia's information on El Torito at the following URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Torito_%28CD-ROM_standard%29

So I don't believe that the fact your system has PS/2 connectors instead of the old AT style keyboard connector is an issue.

Maybe try and boot your .ISO CD in a more recent PC. If you try in more PC's and you are unable to boot from your CD-ROM, then probably it hasn't been burnt properly according to the El Torito spec.

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

David de Bree — 2008-05-28T17:21:59-05:00

5 years after my 541DX took a dump and constantly trying to tell myself that the disk just stopped spinning I decided to just hook it up one more time for giggles, the disk started spinning again but it still registers as a Maxtor Athena... So I decided to entertain myself further, searched for any highly unlikely possible solutions and stumbled upon this very informative thread.

So far, I've met every qualification for the software to work on my HD.

- It is a 541DX
- It is a WAH21PBO
- It is a DSP chipped drive
- It is being recognized on 1 system as Maxtor Athena, another system gives the error message.

So I decided since others has success with the firmware patch software I'd give it a try to! Downloaded both the CD-Rom and Floppy versions of the file. I burnt the iso image to a brand new disk as it says in the manual. (I have Nero 6) Dropped the disk into my other PC with no other drives connected except the CD-R on IDE1 Master and.... nothing. Does not recognize the disk as a bootable disk. *sigh* Tried it in my other systems, same result.

Ok fine, lets try the other route. I had to burn the floppy version of the file to another CD-R since this computer does not have a floppy drive and then used my other system (Win98) to get a working floppy going. Installed the software as instructed onto the floppy and that worked fine, said it was ready to go. Great! Disconnected the good HD and CD-R, both IDE 1 and 2 cables are empty, no HD's or CD-R's have power either. Only the 3.25 floppy connected, went into the Bios, changed boot sequence to A,C,CD and fired it up. The ISO software did this time boot up using the floppy! Finally progress past step 2.

It loads up the Terms and Conditions screen, I read them completely.... and then I go to press y. then I try Shift+y.... then i hit caps lock and press Y.... then I start mashing the yyyyyyyyyy and then you get the standard beeps from every key you touch on the keyboard.... It won't go past the T&C screen, locked up.... *sigh* ok fine, you win stupid PC. Square 1: Got another floppy, formatted it completely, installed the software again on the new disk, tried to boot off of that one, got to T&C, and pressed Y 3 billion times, same result.... Grrrrr.....

Getting desperate, downloaded the newest version of Nero: Found a trial for Nero 8. Installed that, made another CD-Rom with iso file, and that one also would not get recognized by any of the systems...

CD-Rom won't boot, doesn't recognize the ISO as a bootable file/disk on 3 PC's
Floppy's won't progress past the T&C screen on 2 PC's, 3rd one doesnt have floppy to test.

Oh and the website for support, someone had the same problem I did, made a post and tried to explain it 3 different times and each reply he got: Go buy the software. I'm not about to drop $500 to recover a $30 drive.

So, anyone that had this issue lately and has tried to run the files have any issues of this kind or have any suggestions? Sadly I don't have my old motherboard that had the (omg i forgot the connector name) old giant keyboard connector, all the motherboards I have now got P/S2 connectors, not sure if that's the problem.

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

CH SE — 2008-04-19T07:07:20-05:00

Please visit
http://support.salvationdata.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t...84f6e50700
in order to use the software in all circumstances, you should have Pro version

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Ed Stocker — 2007-03-08T17:01:07-05:00

Hi,
here a little help HDD Firmware Repairer 2.0 attention just only for the Maxtor 541DX.

have a nice Day

Ed

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Patrick Stratton — 2006-12-22T09:42:16-05:00

I know this is an old thread but I had experience with one of these 20gb drives lately. The answer to the Table 4 hang, at least for me was this: I used the cd version, booted into the program, and when I got to the part where you connect the hard drive I disconnected the cdrom and then connected the drive. All went smoothly after that. Good luck!

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Artur Martins — 2006-09-28T15:59:57-05:00

Hello all,

I just got the same problem and I'm doing all the step-by-step provided by Neha Raspann's previous posts and I read in detail the PDF provided by the Maxtor 541DX Firmware Repair Demo.

My question is about the checking tables stage. In my case, Repair Now action displays:

Checking table 1: error found and repaired
Checking table 2: error found and repaired
Checking table 3: error found and repaired

And at this moment, the hard disc LED of my ATX box it's on, and the computer doesn't respond to any command. I thought that could be a long time operation, but after one entire night, it was on same stage.

I even tried on different motherboards: Asus, MSI, QDI but the result is the same

What I would like to know is: how long did the patching take?

Any tip??

Thanks in advance

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Neha Raspann — 2006-07-09T16:23:29-05:00

OK I goofed.

The Maxtor 2B010H1 drive I referred to in my two previous posts is indeed supposed to be a 10GB drive.

The capacity was calculated from the LBA times hard disk drive 512 bytes/sector.

Please do the math for yourself to verify.

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Neha Raspann — 2006-07-09T14:55:42-05:00

I managed to resolve the problem with formatting the repaired Maxtor 2B010H1 firmware WAH21PB0 drive.

Not exactly sure which of the following two software programs did the job, but here is my description.

To review, I successfully used Salvation Data Firmware Repair demo to repair corrupted firmware on a 20GB hard drive identifying itself as Maxtor Athena (please see my earlier post).

The drive subsequently was resurrected as Maxtor 2B010H1, code WAH21PB0 , but now only 10GB in capacity.

Next, I was able to partition the drive, but unable to format.

My next step was to run Salvation Data Sector Repair demo. Please download it from the Free Downloads section at http://www.salvationdata.com/.

Follow the instructions c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y.

For me, the Sector Repair app locked up at 97%.

Next, I ran the Maxtor Low Level Format Utility (NOT PowerMax or MaxBlast). The Maxtor LLF took a while to run, but completed. I noticed that the max LBA was now one less than what was on the drive label (19531250), reported as 19531249 by Maxtor LLF.

It was necessary to partition the drive again. The reported capacity was even less now, so I guess between Sector repair and Maxtor LLF bad sectors had been added to the G-List.

Voila, I was able to successfully format the drive.

OK so that ends my saga with the Maxtor Athena problem. Hope the information presented is helpful to at least one of you reading this.

Last, I apologize again to the pro drive recovery community for my earlier digressions, FWIW.

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Neha Raspann — 2006-07-08T09:52:52-05:00

First, apologies to all pro drive recovery techs out there. I have been banned from 2 forums in the aftermath of seeking help for my problem.

Here are some comments relating to my success repairing firmware corruption of Maxtor model 2B010H1 using Salvation Data firmware repair.

First, how I solved the Maxtor Athena problem, then the details.

!!! Warning !!!
The following procedure destroys all data on the drive. I was fortunate in that I was able to image the drive just before the firmware corruption occurred.

Go to http://www.salvationdata.com/

Navigate to the Free Downloads section.

Download the Maxtor 541DX Firmware Repair Demo (not the Sector Repair util). Note there is a version for floppy and another for CD-ROM.

Must read the instructions c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y and follow exactly.

Jumper the drive for 'safe mode,' as clearly shown in the PDF manual.

The Maxtor drive to be recovered will need to use master IDE2. If you want to boot from CD, will have to change the boot optical drive to IDE1 since the Maxtor MUST be connected as master IDE2. Probably a good idea to unplug ALL hard disk drives in the system before proceeding.

!!! Important !!!
DO NOT plug the Maxtor in yet.

Make the boot disc (floppy or CD-ROM).

Boot the computer using the boot disc created above. The BIOS may alert you that the drive configuration has changed. No problem, that is normal, accept the changes and continue to boot up.

Press Y to enter the firmware repair program when prompted.

Now plug in the data and power cables for the Maxtor drive.

Run the Repair Wizard and follow the prompts.

Reboot to 32-bit DOS or Windows and format/re-partition as desired.

Two issues resulted: 1) The drive originally was 20GB capacity, but now was only 10GB. I tried the Sector Repair util from Salvation Data, but was unable to 'reset' the drive size back to 20GB. 2) Was unable to format as FAT32. Used Maxtor Powermax to zero all sectors, but still could not format. Next I will try some HDD utils. If successful, I will report back.

My story:

Wanted to reformat the Maxtor 2B010H1, code WAH21PB0 and use for a different application. Originally the drive was in a PC running a scientific instrument. A new computer running the Windows XP version of the instrument software had been successfully implemented, thus the Maxtor could be migrated to another use.

I successfully imaged the Maxtor drive using Ghost 2004 for archival purposes.

The drive was 20GB max capacity and had a 8GB NTFS partition with Windows NT installed. Next, using Windows XP Disk Management, I deleted the 10GB partition then created a 20GB partition.

Then, I executed a format of the 20GB partition.

Format went to 100% then reported that format could not be completed.

I rebooted to 32-bit DOS and tried to use Fdisk. Fdisk reported 'drive not accessible'.

Next, I rebooted and entered BIOS setup. The Maxtor was listed as Athena, not 2B010H1.

From there, I did some googling and found the Salvation Data solution.

I am resigned to using the drive at 10GB instead of the original 20GB capacity.

For those who don't know, Maxtor was recently acquired by Seagate, for obvious reasons.

OK thanks for reading and I hope this post is helpful to at least one of you who had the misfortune of installing a Maxtor 2B010H1, a.k.a. 541DX.

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Sergio Momesso — 2006-05-06T08:08:39-05:00

ROMULUS, ALTAIR, ATHENA are only a few of all cancers created by MacStore which is believed to be caused by poorly written firmware code. It is safe to call them cancers because at this point, there is no easy cure and the manufacturer declines knowledge in these matters whatsoever. There is just NO INFORMATION available on the manufacturer's website and if you call to speak to someone about the problem, you are treated as if you were the one with cancer.

I guess until some powerfull rich people take time to file and bring up some legal action against Maxtor Corp., there is nothing more to do than talk about the cancer. Who knows, maybe some class action lawsuit could follow up. Hey, I'm in!

Meanwhile, if your are one of those lucky customer whose MacStore drive is not yet suffering amnesia, the best gift you can give yourself is to go buy another manufacturer's drive RIGHT AWAY and BACKUP the future clunker. Only then will you be able to snooze peacefully at night. But if you're the poor bastard stuck with an amnestic cancer, still, GO BUY another manufacturer's drive anyway. But forget restfull sleep for a couple of weeks. And when you get to reading these lines, only then will you be able to say that you found something, finally.... Not a cure but some relief... Like morphine to cancer... Ahhhhhh! Relief....

Sorry I couldn't be of more help diego marquez. But the post being a month old, I suspect not many could help you more anyway...

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

diego marquez — 2006-04-03T06:50:04-05:00

somebody knows something about MAXTOR ROMULUS and how to repair-update, pc3000? or salvation hdd pro?.... tahbks

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

diego marquez — 2006-04-03T05:57:55-05:00

THIS problem is not for the drive.... recover muy info is the problem.... maxtor cant sell bad drives... and nobody say nothing!!! WE HAVE ...to do something... many people around the world have the same problem.... please contact me

Re: Maxtor Athena or 541DX

Sergio Momesso — 2006-03-20T03:49:39-05:00

Do you work for Mac Store Fuji Teck? Sure sounds like it...