Some old Quantum HDD tools

[phatass]

I know Quantum is pretty much dead as a company, but I had to diagnose/fix a few of their drives recently (lots of old junkers in my country what can I say), and noticed that UBCD (and all other bootable utility CDs for that matter) lacks their tools. Namely I was thinking of Data Eraser and QDPS (Quantum Data Protection System --> Weird name for something that is basically their diagnostic program )

Since these tools are pretty ancient I tracked a few links down via archive.org

http://web.archive.org/web/200108132048 ... c20005.exe

http://web.archive.org/web/200208150831 ... s_scsi.exe

http://web.archive.org/web/200108161931 ... dps102.exe

http://web.archive.org/web/200108161931 ... Manual.pdf

Hope these links help anything, don't know if it makes sense to include some of these, but I wouldn't mind seeing them since UBCD has tools for almost every HDD manufacturer, so why not Quantum as well. Just my 2 cents.

[ady]

I know Quantum is pretty much dead as a company

Anyone interested could read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... isk_drives.

Basically, WDC and Seagate are currently the only 2 companies selling HDDs to the public (if the current intentions of purchases are approved).

Quantum was bought by Maxtor, and then Maxtor was bought by Seagate, so the question (for phatass) would be if the tools currently included in UBCD (from Maxtor and/or Seagate) are not suitable for those old Quantum HDDs.

@phatass, in addition, there is an additional (v.5.x) version of Maxtor's tools, that is currently NOT included in UBCD, that may have the Quantum models included, so you could search for it too and try it on your old Quantum HDDs. In theory, all those models should had been incorporated to the Seagate's tools, but maybe in practice they weren't.

Could you post the specific Quantum HDD models you are talking about?

If you try any of the Maxtor and/or Seagate tools (included or not in UBCD) and any of them work for your HDDs models, please report back so the info can be added where it is necessary.

[phatass]

Mostly Quantum fireball lct series between 10-30 gigs.
PowerMax does a fine job of zeroing/wiping/LLF-ing the drive, but diagnostic tests take faaaar too long with PowerMax, almost to the point of me wanting to fall asleep And I've used PowerMax on countless Maxtor drives, and trust me some of the tests take ridiculously long compared to Maxtor drives. My guess is Maxtor never bothered writing proper code for Quantum diagnostics.
Never tried SeaTools with the drives, but I guess their support for old drives is even worse, don't even know how well SeaTools supports Maxtor, since I never tried it with a Maxtor drive, only used it with Seagate hard drives, I much more prefer PowerMax for Maxtor drives.

The point is QDPS does a faster/more detailed diagnostic for Quantum drives, then PowerMax IMHO.
It also supports most Quantum SCSI drives, since I don't have a SCSI card or a Quantum SCSI HDD, I can't say how useful this is, but I have a suspicion that PowerMax or SeaTools simply doesn't support these.

[ady]

Older versions of MaxBlast had some bugs in the Diagnostic code.

PowerMax 4.09/4.23 are the latest versions from Maxtor, and is the recommended tool for older Maxtor/Quantum HDD Diagnostics. These versions are already included in UBCD.

In fact, the available tools from those ol' days for almost all the different manufacturers were the same: an OEM version of some tool from Ontrack. So using an "original" Quantum's tool shouldn't be the recommended tool, having available the "same" tool but more updated.

Seatools (Seagate owns Quantum HDDs) also covers general checks, besides the more-in-depth diagnostics specifically for Seagate's models.

Of course there are older tools that cover older HDDs that are not included in newer versions, but for those cases UBCD includes both versions (WDC "AC" old models, for example).

Most special settings for special models, that used to have specific tools, are already included in newer tools (from Maxtor and/or Seagate) or there is a more general tool that covers them too.

In most cases, scsi models have separate tools, and in most cases are still available from Seagate's website (for Seagate/Maxtor/Quatum/Conner...).

About the "slow" speed, in part has relation to the (old) HDD speed and condition.

I think that adding every specific tool for every specific case in the default UBCD might over complicate the use for "general" users. For specific cases, there is always the possibility of customization.

To give a different example (other than Quantum), Dell has several DOS-based tools. Should all be added to UBCD as default?

Anyway, this is only my personal opinion, and the info provided here is still useful and appreciated in any case.

For general info and links that might be useful for Quantum HDDs:

LCT20:
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/maxt ... asheet.pdf
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/maxt ... manual.pdf

"Jumper Settings for Maxtor and Quantum® ATA hard drives.[178585]"
http://support.seagate.com/rightnow/ima ... umpers.htm
("CLJ"=\ "Cylinder Limitation Jumper").

"How can I determine the model and capacity of my Quantum® hard drive?[175331]"
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... en&Hilite=

"Seagate KnowledgeBase for Quantum (Internal, External, or SCSI)
(several pages; clcik "next" to see more FAQs)"
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... chKeyWord=

"knowledgebase description of the 3digit error code"
(should be the same as for old Seagate/Maxtor/Quantum... at Seagate's site)
http://web.archive.org/web/200208152120 ... 703-000069

"knowledgebase description of the 6digit error code"
(should be the same as for old Seagate/Maxtor/Quantum... at Seagate's site)
http://web.archive.org/web/200208152120 ... 03-000069n

There are more links available, but those are a good "start" .

[ady]

I just wanted to add this from seagate:

"System requirements and supported Hard Drives for the QDPS SCSI program. [177339]"
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... NewLang=en

System Requirements, Supported Hard Drives, and Operating Instructions for the QDPS SCSI program.

Notice: SCSIMax is the latest SCSI diagnostic utility. QDPS will no longer be offered.