Incorrectly recognised Maxtor disks

London and Manchester, UK
0870140 2525

Failures on Maxtor hard disk drives - 'incorrect' / family alias BIOS identification

Symptoms: During the startup sequence (when the computer is powered on), the hard drive will spin up but the computer will often hang in the BIOS and not proceed any further. The BIOS will identify the hard drive as one of the following:

  • Maxtor Ares64

  • Maxtor Athena

  • Maxtor Calypso

  • Maxtor Falcon

  • Maxtor Gala

  • Maxtor N40P

  • Maxtor Nike

  • Maxtor Proxima

  • Maxtor Rigel

  • Maxtor Romulus

Notes: The BIOS is actually identifying the drive by it's family rather than the actual model. This is because the drive has sustained a corruption to it's firmware zone.

Recovery possibilities: Data Clinic are often able to perform a full data recovery
Please call us on 0870 140 2525

Do Not: Open the drive or swap the controller boards as you'll compound the problem making recoverable data potentially unrecoverable. The drive needs to be correctly diagnosed and recovered in order for it's data to become accessible again.

What should I do?: Call the Data Clinic and talk your problem through with us on 0870 140 2525, or fill out our auto-form and we'll call you back

>> Read our case study regarding recovering data from a Maxtor DiamondMax 8 hard disk drive with a firmware corruption (recognised as Maxtor N40P)
>> Read our section on data recovery from Maxtor hard disk drives
>> Go to the MAIN data recovery page

Please note that all modern hard disk drives are manufactured to very high standards, fail infrequently and have very similar rates of reliability.

 

Above: A Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 hard disk that has a corruption of the firmware zone will often be recognised as a "Maxtor Calypso" in the BIOS

 

 

Above: A Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 hard disk will often be recognised as "Maxtor N40P" in the BIOS if the drive has suffered damage to it's firmware zone

 

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