Musical Maxtor

[DanU]

The sound is coming from a tiny speaker inside the HD. The beeping is probably some sort of diagnistic code similar to motherboard beeps.

[PhilLewin]

Removed it from the HD case and gave it a good shake/twist while power was applied. This started it spinning and it clunked horribly a few times but I managed to boot. Backed up all unsaved data! Requested a RMA from maxtor last night. I am not happy about their warranty conditions. I have got to pay for the return and get a reconditioned drive as a replacement. I paid £210 each for these drives and expect better cover than what I have been given. I used up 37 cdr's backing up the drive and have also ordered an external drive to use for backup/transfer when the replacement comes! Thanks. Just make sure everybody who comes to this forum understands that the Maxtor Diamondmax plus 9 drives do have diagnostic Beeps and they are not going crazy!

Cheers

Phil

[jman11587]

i just got this strange beeping on my 120gig Maxtor hdd that i installed in my xbox about 7 months ago. incase ur not familiar with the whole xbox modding thing u can check out www.xbox-scene.com.

anyway, i tried the tapping thing, with no results. i was going to try and freeze it, but to transfer over 80gigs from an xbox is insane, the ftp speeds from the xbox to my pc is around 5 megs a sec. this would take 5 or 6 hours to transfer. by that time i would think the drive would have thawed.

my question is, is there another way to still recover my data?
maybe something that buys me a little more time?

thanks,
J

[grungebob]

Hello All-

I first saw this thread back in June, and asked someone here at Maxtor to post an official reply, but I guess that did not happen. So I will try to explain the noise and the problem cause, but I can't give specific details, and please don't get me in trouble at my job by complaining to Maxtor.

First of all let me apologize on behalf of Maxtor to anyone that has this problem. There is only a "one-in-a-million" chance that this will occur. There are no tiny speakers. The sound that is heard is known as the "buzz routine" that is intended to unstick heads from the media. This can only happen under very rare conditions if power is removed or spiked abnormally. The firmware routine that tries to move the actuator and heads actually causes an audible sound. On your particular drives the routine fails because the frequencies are not quite right. Tapping or beating on the drive may also unstick the heads, but there's a chance that part of the media could get damaged.

Rest assured that 2 different fixes were implemented months ago and the issue should not happen again. It's not my job, but I will try to check at this site periodically to see if there are any other issues with Maxtor drives.

Rock On! BW

[runner359]

Great thread. This is the only place that explains the musical tones eminating from my 120gb maxtor drive. No boot because the drive gave a boot error.

Fortunately after taking the cover off and restarting the computer three or four times to locate the source of the sound, the drive started and the computer ran normally. Sounds stopped when the drive operated.

Thanks for the effort to document the problem.

Time to contact Maxtor tech support (no mention of the problem on their site)

[Celticartist]

I just got a 120gb Diamondmax Plus today and i'm not getting that melodic beep, what i am getting though is something that sounds like system beeps whenever the drive is in slightly heavy use, for example when i'm installing programs, or running a game. It's just a steady beep, not like a pre-programmed signal and it will go on and on. I'm hoping i don't have to return or RMA the drive as i just finished getting everything installed and it seems to be running fine, just making that noise. If anyone has had a beep like that, and may know what is causing it or what i should do, please let me know, Thanks.

[Brondum9]

Maxtor Sucks

[johnojundo]

You guys and this thread are a God send!!!! I mean it! My 120 GB drive started acting possessed today when I booted up my computer. My computer started to play some wierd polyphonic tones. At first I thought it was my computer, but after some closer inspection, I realized that it was coming from the back of my computer and after my computer booted up I saw that my secondary drive didn't boot up. That's when I concluded that it was my Maxtor drive making that wierd noise. So, I opened up the computer, took out the drive and mounted it in an external USB 2.0 case. When I powered up the external drive, the "music" started up again and the drive refused to spin up. It just sat there taunting me. I went to the Maxtor sight and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find an answer. By the way, the Maxtor support sight sucks!!!! It's really badly designed! Anyhow, I had given up all hope after trying multiple options. I thought I had lost all my precious data (I used the drive to store photos and to edit movies - really precious data). I even considered calling up a data recovery specialist. Just when I was about to give up for the night, I decided to give google a try and thank God, your thread came up! This site is the only one I've found that even acknowledges the existence of a strange polyphonic noise coming from the Maxtor drive! I have to thank you all! You saved me a lot of money and helped me salvage some precious memories. I just can't wait to hear what the tech support at Maxtor has to say. Will they deny the existence of this mysterious music? Well, at least I can tell them to go visit this site. I'm going to delete and reformat the drive and send it back to Maxtor and hopefully, I'll get a more reliable one! Thanks again. By the way, I salvaged my data by using the old fashioned, American method. I "hit" the drive a few times and it booted up! Hehehehehehe! Go American ingenuity!

[pres_lincoln]

Ooh I'm so glad with you guys, came home this day and had this sick GSM sound in my PC too.. By tapping my 120 GB Maxtor with the rubber hammer, it went on spinning again! I appreciate all your help very much. and @ EndobioticChaos, in case your still interested: I found this answer in 3 clicks via google by searching for Maxtor and Beep, 3th link gave me this forum .
Thanks again, God bless you all.

[jtf]

Count me as another user that experienced the same problem. I have a 120gb plus9 and it started singing at me yesterday.

I'm an editor and hardware reviewer for www.designtechnica.com and happened to be testing a power supply today.... So I hooked the Maxtor drive up to the psu and I determined that the sound was in fact coming from the drive!

I googled and found this thread. Thanks again for starting it Scott. Nice site you've got here TechIMO.

I haven't tried to rescue my data yet. Wish me luck!