EtherealRemnant Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 So yeah, I downloaded an ISO off of newsgroups last night - the 10.4.4 Maxxuss that had the package called "We stole it suckers" and upon rebooting the PC after I finished the install, the computer will not pass POST when that drive is attached. The only thing I can think is that it wrote some EFI {censored} to the drive that made it so the BIOS couldn't access it at all. Maxtor won't replace the drive so I'm out a perfectly good 200GB drive over the situation. Be very wary what you use to install your systems people as this drive is now a 200 dollar paperweight... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neosublime Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 boot back off of that OS X CD, start up disk utility, and repartition the drive to FAT32. BUT, the most important thing, select the options button, and chose PC Partition scheme. Then you can boot of a win32 disk and repartition the drive. Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EtherealRemnant Posted March 4, 2006 Author Share Posted March 4, 2006 I would but unfortunately, the BIOS will not pass POST - it just softlocks and sits there - when the drive is hooked up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
letni Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 It sounds like your drive just crapped out. There is nothing that can be written to a hard drive that can make a standard BIOS {censored} out during the drive scan as nothing is actuall read off disk during a post. The first time the BIOS actually reads any data is when it goes to read the bootstrap to boot off a disk. Have you also checked your jumper settings as sometimes those (depending on manufacturer) can cause bioses to hang. I know Western Digital drives hate being single drives (1 device on chain) when they are set to master..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vboyz Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 I installed it onto my external HDD and after that it booted just fine on my Dell 9300 lappy. Wireless also works with Atheros base a/b/g I got, but WPA is not working properly so gotta go down to WEP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EtherealRemnant Posted March 4, 2006 Author Share Posted March 4, 2006 It sounds like your drive just crapped out. There is nothing that can be written to a hard drive that can make a standard BIOS {censored} out during the drive scan as nothing is actuall read off disk during a post. The first time the BIOS actually reads any data is when it goes to read the bootstrap to boot off a disk. Have you also checked your jumper settings as sometimes those (depending on manufacturer) can cause bioses to hang. I know Western Digital drives hate being single drives (1 device on chain) when they are set to master..... I highly doubt the drive just decided to up and die on me right after putting OS X 10.4.4 on it but whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaiOSX Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 If you only link it to the power plug, can you hear the startup selftest (sound of heads)? If yes, you may try to plug it as slave and try to boot the OSX DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genesis Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 EtherealRemnant I had the same problem on my intel Mobo D915GUX. Is it SATA or PATA? How it is Partitioned? In my case I had 3 partitions. On the first - 10.4.3, an it was active(bootable). On the second 10.4.5. and on the third just a HFS+ partition for data. It was partitioned with Diskpart in Windows. The thing is that then I make "bless -setBoot" to the 10.4.5 partition the drive fails POST. This don't happen if I partition the drive in Disk Utility booted from 10.4.3 DVD 4.2 Jas Patched(when I "bless -setBoot" to the 10.4.5 partition). I think it's something about Partition Table?!? Dunno. Now the solution: take your Drive to another PC that will not hang at POST(In my case it was IBM) . Boot to windows. 1.In Run type "diskpart". 2.Type "list disk" to see the number of the disk u'll be working with. 3.Then u make ur choice, type "select disk [number here]". 4. Type "list partition" to see the partition number u'll make active. 5. Type "select partition [number here]" 6. Type "active" Now u're done. Try it on your PC. Hope it helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtraa Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 So yeah, I downloaded an ISO off of newsgroups last night - the 10.4.4 Maxxuss that had the package called "We stole it suckers" and upon rebooting the PC after I finished the install, the computer will not pass POST when that drive is attached. The only thing I can think is that it wrote some EFI {censored} to the drive that made it so the BIOS couldn't access it at all. Maxtor won't replace the drive so I'm out a perfectly good 200GB drive over the situation. Be very wary what you use to install your systems people as this drive is now a 200 dollar paperweight... But the HDD is displayed correctly in the bios under boot devices? If not, try some other cables. I would also try to recover it via aother PC or by connecting it external to USB or FiWi. What happens if you boot from an XP install CD, and you are asked for selecting the partitions there? Is it really dead? Does it make funny sounds? I think it can't be EFI because you should be able to use any HDD that was used in an EFI Computer before, simply by reformatting/initializing it again. Good luck so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaS Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 The 4.4 patched dvd floating around does partition the drive GUID (Efi),also it trys to set the boot as -efiBoot when setting up the drive.So even if you partition the drive pc partitioning,it will never be set bootable. The solution you have two options here. 1)Patch the iso with two files before you burn it,Bless and Disk Utility from 10.4.1 2)Find the 4.4-->4.5 updater ppf for that iso,It will correct this efi boot issue Good Luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominus Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 I would but unfortunately, the BIOS will not pass POST - it just softlocks and sits there - when the drive is hooked up. That image worked fine for me installed to a Seagate SATA. I keep at least two drives in my system, and just go into the BIOS and tell it which drive to boot from (XP on one, OSX on another.) I did have a drive fail on me after 12 hours (after I had cloned 100GB of data onto it of course!), could be a coincidence. Do you have a bootable XP drive in the computer? I'd say just unplug the dead 200 and send it back to Maxtor. Even hooked up as a slave, that dead drive would lock up the computer during bootup, even with SMART turned off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chucklesjh Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 I installed with that same disk that said "we stole it suckers" and it works fine :-/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arthurson Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 use anther harddisk to boot the machine then use pm to format your 200gb harddisk that should be ok Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ps1000 Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 change your hdd bios settings from auto to LBA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
numberonekiwi Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 one thing i have found with my system and may work with yours unplug the said drive if it is sata boot into your o/s from another drive then simply plug the drive back in (SATA) then using disk utils see if it is listed and then partition it (if using windows right click my computer then select manage ... ) Good Luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominus Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 one thing i have found with my system and may work with yours unplug the said drive if it is sata boot into your o/s from another drive then simply plug the drive back in (SATA) then using disk utils see if it is listed and then partition it (if using windows right click my computer then select manage ... ) Good Luck And if your computer locks up, the drive is dead. Only works with SATA though, it's how I determined mine was indeed, dead. Unplugged the data cable, booted into XP fine, then plugged it back in. Lockup city. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callysto Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Can you boot from CD or floppy with the drive attached? If you can then run maxblast and erase the entire drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dponmac Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 I dont get why people keep trying to give advice. If the computer wont post with the drive hooked up, there isn't much he can do. Even if you got it back up and runing for some odd reason, I wouldn't trust it. Theres obviously something wrong with the drive. Why wont Maxtor replace the drive? Don't tell them the details of what you did before it died, just tell them it died. I garuantee if you make enough commotion you'll get that drive replaced, just dont give up. RMA is your friend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metrogirl Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 Yes, I can confirm that Maxtor are really good about replacing drives, they will even ship the new drive the same day you call them, and you send the old one back in the box the new one comes in. They take a credit card number in case you don't return the old drive but they don't debit anything. I know this because of all the drives I've used in the last five years, Maxtors are the only ones that I've had die on me. And yes, I've lost a drive within hours of first using it. I won't use Maxtor now except in mirror or RAID 5 configs. WD, Hitachi, Toshiba and Seagate all seem much less trouble. Maxtor actually make a 'professional' range of HDDs which look identical and have the same buffer/speed/capacity etc. but cost more. I cynically wonder if they know their consumer line is less reliable? :censored2: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esc2 Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 Well, it's always worth a try using the old reverse global warming treatment. Throw it in the freezer overnight and see it if changes it's attitude when it thaws out. If Maxtor won't replace/repair your drive go to ebay and get a couple of dead drives that are identical. If they died from mechanical causes the electronic controller boards should be ok. Take one off and mount it on your hard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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