Musical Maxtor

[fatguy666]

Hey all.

I'm hearing the noise too. Have a 120GB DiamondMax Plus 9, it's about a year and a half old. It was busted about 7 months ago (although I wasn't hearing any beeps), my bios would recognise it as a Calypso but couldn't access it. I hit it a few times and it came back to life.

I woke up this morning and noticed my HDD (which is in an external case) was lying on it's side. My girlfriend told me she'd tripped on the USB cable for the case. I tried to turn it back on and that's when the crazy beeps started. I've slammed it a few times but no joy.

Is there anything else you guys can recommend besides sending it to a specialist? I have a ton of movies on the HDD, could I be reported to the MPAA if a recovery expert finds them?

Ta

*fuzz*

[Platin465]

Originally Posted by therobin

When wristing the drive, did you hear the platters spin? Becuase I can hear it spin when I do that, but it still makes that strange sound when I boot it.
Also to Scott: You said the sound was coming from the air filter. How exactly did you know that? I am willing to pull the box if I can confirm that will solve the problem.

I thought I heard it spin, when I did that, but (and I hate the way this sounds) I think I was just imagining it. I think it was the air moving by my ear, or the ambient noise being blocked by the drive when it was in front of my ear and unblocked when it was in a different possition. I especially think that was the case once I hit it in the right spot or whatnot and it started spinning up and the music went away. I used a hollow cylindrical plexiglass object, someone else used a remote control. You may want to try something similar.

[KingKong1]

Well I thought I'd jump on the band wagon and tell my story. I tripped on my USB cable as well and it thumped the ground from bout 2ft. It made all the noises described as above so I banged it and thumped it as everyone suggested. But no luck, and as I don't need a melodic lump of metal I decided to crack it open in a final gasp, I expected to find a switch that was set to broken, and all I needed to do was switch it to fixed.. But alas no luck..

Basically the bearing had ceased, I couldn't do anything to get it spinning so I took the platters out and transfered to a new drive, but I was well out of my depth by then.

But I learnt a few things.

1. Don't open your drive unless you really know what to do once you open it. As in there an't much you can do without disk drive knowledge.

2. DONT BUY ANOTHER MAXTOR DRIVE.

[CES]

Originally Posted by KingKong1

Well I thought I'd jump on the band wagon and tell my story. I tripped on my USB cable as well and it thumped the ground from bout 2ft. It made all the noises described as above so I banged it and thumped it as everyone suggested. But no luck, and as I don't need a melodic lump of metal I decided to crack it open in a final gasp, I expected to find a switch that was set to broken, and all I needed to do was switch it to fixed.. But alas no luck..

Basically the bearing had ceased, I couldn't do anything to get it spinning so I took the platters out and transfered to a new drive, but I was well out of my depth by then.

But I learnt a few things.

1. Don't open your drive unless you really know what to do once you open it. As in there an't much you can do without disk drive knowledge.

2. DONT BUY ANOTHER MAXTOR DRIVE.

1. Agreed.

2. You knock your hardrive to the floor and then blame Maxtor for your woes? Are you friggin serious?

[KingKong1]

Yeah Yeah I knew someone wasn't going to let me get away with that…I thought I'd try my luck. I'm just trying to add to the over all sentiment.. I don't know, call it jumping on the band wagon...

[CES]

Originally Posted by KingKong1

Yeah Yeah I knew someone wasn't going to let me get away with that…I thought I'd try my luck. I'm just trying to add to the over all sentiment.. I don't know, call it jumping on the band wagon...

No worries, all is forgiven.

BTY, Maxtor DID produce significant diamondcrap the last couple years. I know someone that did nothing at all wrong and had their HD crap-out. Took two tries to get a good replacement.

Why do you think they got bought out?

Right sentiment, wrong reason :-)

[Kattara]

Good, I'm not losing my mind. I've got the same exact problem with the musical Maxtor. I've tried all the "tapping" suggestions mentioned above, but still nothing. Weird things is, I think the drive is actually spinning, tho it is beeping. Anybody come across this, or have any other ideas? I don't think I wanna refrigerate it just yet because it is my work's hdd.
Oh, and yeah. I googled to find you guys. You totally rock!!

[dabombiz]

i had got a DM+9 , and it was kept in a cheapo Compusa external case. I tripped on the USB cord and it made those beeping noise, like the post creaters'. i took it to www.gillware.com, the cheapest data recovery place i could find, the techies there titled it a musical maxtor. and they could not recovery any data whatsoever. so, im still holding on to it, hoping there is a chance for data recovery. should i try another company. or i read about the tapping trick, can someone explain further on that. i can only seem myself using a hammer and cloth over my HD

[gnoth]

Just joined so that I could reply to this thread. Thank you for posting all the information! I totally freaked last night when the 300GB drive I had placed in an external drive fell off the top of my PC (dont know how this happened as I wasnt even in the room) and it started playing its tune. Fortunately I didnt lose any data as I was ghosting my C drive to it as I was going to swap them out. Luckily this happened now rather than later (assuming that it might have occured on its own in time to come).

I couldnt get mine to boot up again after it died even though I did try knocking it a few times. Occassionally the sound would stop but the drive still wouldnt appear.

Just to be safe, I am replacing it with a Western Digital 300GB. Anyway, a big thanks once again. Having the mp3 to verify the sound was excellent.

[mujjuman]

i just joined today to say thanks. basically the same thing happened to me, same old music, etc. i went through the same procedures as the OP to determine what was wrong, but i didnt open my drive. the mp3 was REALLY helpful, because my maxtor sounds just like that. i have a diamondmax 10 120GB.

anyway, i tried to revive my maxtor using the methods posted here (tapping, hitting, freezing, heating up) but nothing worked. however i did hear and feel the maxtor try to spin a bit faster, but i get the same results. i tried to tap and then later hit the drive from several different angles, but nothing worked. i have another drive which works perfectly and i know that i hear something when i shake it, but when i shake this maxtor i cant feel anything or hear anything click. when i power on my computer, i can hear the drive grind really bad, and click, but it just wont spin (or wont spin fast enough).

are there other ways of trying to get one last boot out of this drive for atleast 15 mins so i can get valuable data off of the drive? but one thing i dont want to do is send it to some company that will charge me hundreds or thousands of dollars