The firmware problem for Maxtor drive

When we got a broken drive, we must judge what the problem is first. Now we have a 4D drive. Connected to the doctor and power on, the sound is normal, but it couldn’t be recognized (as the picture). Usually we think that it is the FW problems.

Then we began to repair this drive, first, find a compatible donor FW, we can find the model on the drive lab, and we need a donor FW with the same model, code, and initial three SN number. For example: this drive Model is 4D080H4, Code is DAH017K0, SN number is D4039RHE, so we need a donor FW with 4D080H4 Model, DAH017K0 Code and D40xxxxx SN number:

Set the drive to safe model, we can find how to set the drive to safe model in MT manual.

For this HDD we can set the jumper from to .
Then Power on and wait for “ready” status:

Choose “HDD BOOT MANAGEMENT”, click “Load Boot” and set to the donor FW, choose “BOOT.COD” this file:

Then click “Load ROM”,”Load All Mods” step by step, ROM and MODS will be loaded, after that, click “HDD Reset”, the motor begin spinning, wait for the drive turn to “ready” status.

Then, click “Load RAM”. Choose the BOOT RAM file:

Now, back to “LOAD HDD MANAGEMENT”, click “From The File”, choose the RES file:

After load the RES file, the drive could be recognized, click “HDD Parameters”, if all the parameters could be shown rightly, we can sure the boot is successes.

If not all the parameters are shown rightly, (like the LBA=0), we can sure the boot is failed, so we need change another donor FW to boot the drive again. The principle is: the more familiar donor FW, the more successful chance.

Then we back to “HDD BOOT MANAGEMENT”, click “SA R/W Test”, if it is ok, we know that we could do operation with the System Area. Then we can check the modules:

Now we come the “FW DEFECT SCAN”, click “scan key Mods”. The doctor will check the modules problem:

As the above picture, we can see some of the modules are broken, so we need to upload them from the donor FW.

Go to “FW Load”, choose the break modules, set the donor FW course, and click “both FW”, choose “Upload”, the doctor will upload the right modules replace the break:

PS: the “”24,55,120″ and “56,57,79″ modules are belonging to one group, so if one of them break, when we upload the modules, we need upload the other modules also. For example: in this case, the #56 module was broken, so we need upload #56,57,79 the three modules.

Check the modules again we can see those modules are right now:

Then, off the power, set the drive to normal model, and power on, load from HDD, we can see the drive was back to normal again.

Roy