How to repair Maxtor Athena error

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.

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.

Source: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/2499...

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