ATTN: NE1 who has a Maxtor Hard Drive....

[E-NiGmA]

I have a Maxtor 160GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/133 w/ 8MB Cache and I would like to know from ne1 who either has one or knows, if there is ANY WAY this particular HD could damage the PS2? I've had 2 different systems that (I guess) ended up with a blown LA chip after attempting to install a game. I can only assume because both systems were brand new and freshly modded v10's with a DMSv9 chip and both worked fine before the attempted install. Afterward, one ended up with a completely dead dvd drive (eject would not function, reset would not do anything and a disc in the drive would not spin at all) on the second one, the drive would only partially work once the system was booted from standby after the failed game install (It would not eject unless it was powered on by hitting reset. If a disc is inserted, it would spin half assed but not boot. At that point you could only turn it off by hitting the switch in the rear.) One had romeo, the other didn't. I attempted to install Samurai Showdown V on both, once off a Sony brand CD-R, once off a Fuji CD-RW. On CD-R it gives me an error @ 99%, after I aborted the install the drive was blown, off the CD-RW it sent the drive spinning CRAZY fast and then the drive stopped and refused to ever spin again. Also, to ne1 that has this same drive, as it's accessing the drive when booting the system, is it supposed to make one LOUD click? Mine does it and it just makes me cringe cuz it doesn't sound like it should be doing that.

To ANYONE who will be kind enough to respond, PLEASE read this post thoroughly before responding, and actually try to answer my actual questions. I took every effort to describe the issue as clearly as possible and it annoys me when ppl respond by asking questions that are clearly answered in the post, or respond by saying something completely unrelated to my question/problem. I seriously don't mean to be an ass, but I just want a resolution to my problem, and most of the time I post an issue, ppl do one of the above things I'm complaining about.

[JimBeam]

Everyone who posted at the PS2 Hard Drive Compatibility site http://ps2drives.x-pec.com/?v_brand=...r=&v_postedby= indicated that it worked for them. I just received one in the mail today (same specs) and will give it a try when I get home this evening. Is it possible that it could be the modchip install?

[vinniev2222]

i have the sa,e drive you do in my v7 no-mod. I havent had any probs with it yet, had it 4 months now, after two reformats. From other posts I've read, the error at 99% could be the disc itself or the techinque used to burn it. When you have a cd that makes the drive spin hard and fast, from my experiance, that comes from the way it's burned, or size of the data on the disc is too small. (was the image downloaded?). I have had that happen on CD-R's as well as CD-RW's. Not normal at all. Yes, it is normal for the hard drive to make various "clicks" on boot up, that is simply the drive getting ready to operate. Scary sound, I know!

If the functionality of the reset and eject buttons are wierd, the NA can screw with them I've heard, as well as modchips possibly not completely installed properly. Have you tried holding the reset buttong down for 8 seconds or more when having your problem of powering off and booting? I've found it can take awhile in some scenarios. I don't use modchips, but I know those affect the use of the reset and eject buttons differently. Might just want to check inside make sure everything is still connected to where it should be. Hope this helps some.

[E-NiGmA]

Well, I'm not sure about the installs, the two seperate systems were modded by the same person, so I suspected that as well, I have installed in my newest one so I guess I'll put the drive back in and see what happens... I never had any problems when using this drive on one of my own installs so that's the only conclusion I can draw. But why it blows the drive makes no sense...

Hey Jim, can u pm me your results? I'm most interested in that single loud click while in mid-boot. You'll know it when u hear it, it's a single LOUD "snap" about 5 seconds before you see the swirling globes at the main menu.

[corf]

My NA screws with the reset/eject button for me in my pal v5 messiah 1 - the buttons now appear sluggish when the harddrive is in use, also tapping reset tends to turn the PS2 off(standby) instead of just a quick reset like it used to do pre HD. And the Eject light can just sit there flashing when the HD is doing something - it eventually ejects.

My 160GB seagate is working fine in it and is a lot quieter than the 40GB IBM that made lots of clicking noises that you describe - It also made these clicking noises in the PC mind you - i.e. when it was spinning up.

Personally i think that if HDloader/Hard disks were damaging PS2's we would of heard about it before now.

Can you confirm that both Ps2's are now dead i.e. you cannot boot up an original Disk from them? even after a power cycle? and without a HD present!

[E-NiGmA]

Ok, just to clear it up, I'm NOT talking about the series of semi-quiet noises it make apon booting, those I've heard in both my PC and my Xbox, this is something I've never heard from any HD before and I'll say this as clearly as I can. After it starts up there is ONE..........FINAL...........SINGLE............LOU D..........CLICK/SNAP right before it boots and I need to know that this is normal before I lose another system. Also, yes the other 2 system are dead, after the NA and HD and mod were removed they DO NOT WORK.

[alucard_x]

i have a DX-401 or whatever it is, 80gb maxtor. when your ps2 first boots up before you get to the browser or info selection, the machine will power up the HD by default, the loud click is the HD turning off after it the machine spins it up for no reason. after this once you are loading HDLoader the machine will power up the HD again. furthermore if you hold down the reset button for about 5 seconds it should power off, and if you notice when it powers off it should make the same click as it powers down. i believe this is normal.. one way to test is to put it into a PC and shut it down and listen what the drive does.

[xtachyonx]

I will tell you right now, that hard-drive you have installed is dead.

The first large HDD I bought ( 120gb ata133 maxtor [the one everyone recommends <Product Code 6Y120L0>] Did the exact same loud SNAP (after boot... 3x in a row) noises. Although I installed it on a PC, and the PC regognized it, I could not scan/chkdisk it, but I was able to format it according to windows.... but the result would still appear to be a incorrect drive format.

Heres my suggestion, put the drive in the computer, and verify that you can WRITE to the hard disk after a NTFS format, and do a chkdsk and enable S.M.A.R.T ( here's a linky if your not computer techy-literate) on the drive

http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...uresSMART.html Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART)

The program "Active S.M.A.R.T" can easily diagnose the problems with the disk. Heres the link... http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/ ... download the trial. Faulty HDDs with SMART will not damage your computer, because the motherboard has SMART functionality ( and will not boot,in severe cases , other times it will give you the appropriate warnings and such) ...but a PS2 doesent have that same and seemingly simple luxury...

Anyways, the end result was me returning the HDD to the store for the same drive... and volia!, the drive behaved as it should, no loud snaps or anything....

Also to further solidify my point, All Maxtor Dirves that are ATA 133/100 come with Acoustic Management ENABLED at the hardware level, (I assume you haven't disabled it... theres no point for a extra .01 ms access/seek time for a tradeoff of more noise) thus, the loud snaps are a sure tale sign of trouble, as you should hear nothing in a normal environment.... (unless your Ear is ON the PS2 itself)

So, put it in your PC, Enable SMART in your BIOS (should already be...but just to make sure...) try to format/chkdsk ....and try to write to it.... if all that works out for you, then use that active SMART program.

I hope this helps you, as I am quite sure this is your problem...
Post your results here...
EDIT: 1st post... no more lurking... yay

[E-NiGmA]

Well it's not DEAD because it still works and all, but could the drive "issues" you speak of be leading to killing the DVD drive?