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Older Mac IDE Drive/Drive Setup Issues? Josh Lewis of a local Apple dealer sent a
       report of problems with using drive setup versions later than 1.5 with older Mac Performa
       models. I've gotten many reports of 64/6500 owners using modern, fast IDE drives without
       problems but I'd like for any owners of these machines to let me know what drive setup
       version they are using. Here is Josh's report: 

             " Tonight I discovered a bug after doing long and laborious data recovery for
             someone who owns a Performa. They took all the money they could afford
             and put their faith in apple computer and have had to come in to see me far too
             many times. 

             I discovered that drive setup has been munching the hard drives in tones of
             5200's, 6200's, 6300's and possibly 64/6500's. Getting an update is NOT
             the solution as the web would suggest. it turns out that drive setups more
             recent than 1.5 actually write "0000" as the first sector on the boot blocks of
             these IDE drives or any third party IDE drive. That means according to disk
             editor that they are not bootable and not Macintosh formatted disks.... 

             MacOS 8 will go a head and install and run on these drives for a while... for
             months.. for long enough for the customer to accumulate important data and
             then start making mistakes or giving the "Flashing Question mark" on startup.
             Data recovery is usually painful and not always successful. Currently I've
             tested Drive setup 1.6, 1.6.1, 1.7, 1.7.2, and 1.7.3 and they all screw the
             IDE drives on Performa's none of their read me's mention this and I am going
             to go through channels to report this tomorrow. It is only due to the fact that
             my customer requested 7.5 that I discovered this problem. I can't tell you
             what a trail of tears from drive problems on these computers have been. 

             Drive Setup 1.3.1 (the last to offer 68k support) as well as 1.5 all write the
             proper 4C4B ,"LK" signature. I think this is an issue that's important for
             other people to know and investigate.
             -Josh Lewis "

       See the later reader feedback that indicates it does not seem to be a common problem and could
       be releated to drive make as well. I'd like for any owners of these machines to let me know
       what drive setup version they are using and if they have seen any problems. I've had only
       good reports from 64/6500 owners with Maxtor IDE drives in the last year. 

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Readers replied to an earlier alert from an Apple dealer on older Macs with IDE drives using
       drive setup versions past 1.5. One fairly common thread seems to be Western Digital drives
       (why am I not surprised).: 

             "In response to earlier posts, I thought I'd let you know about my current
             situation. My Performa 6400's original drive finally puked on me last week,
             and as stated by Josh Lewis, data recovery was impossible (so far...) and the
             first sector did in fact read "0000" as a non-bootable and invalid Mac disk (but
             I would speculate that such would be the case on many, if not all, crashed
             disks). HOWEVER, after having installed a Maxtor 4.1 GB drive and
             formatting it with Drive Setup 1.6 (and later updating to 1.72), my first sector
             correctly reads "4C4B", "LK". I'm no expert, and I agree with Josh that there
             is something fishy about the Performa's ATA implementation, but I don't
             think he's quite on the right trail.
             [Update sent later:]
             Following up on my report, my original drive was a Western Digital 2.4 GB.
             Also, I think it may be important to note that when running Norton Disk
             Doctor 4.03, it automatically disables the partition check. On the reports, it
             reads that my Partition Map Style is N/A. I would think this to be irregular, as
             the original drive scanned the partitions just fine, but I'm not sure what the
             Partition Map Style should/did read.
             Jeremy Schulz"

       A Performa 6214 owner writes he's seen no problems with a Quantum drive:

             "Mike:
             Since summer of 1997, I've installed OS's 8.0 through 8.6 on my Performa
             6214CD, which has a Quantum Fireball 1 GB internal drive. Each time I've
             done so, I've used the associated Drive Setup utility (versions 1.3 through
             1.7.3) to update my drivers, and I've never had boot or data-corruption
             problems of any kind. Furthermore, about two months ago, I used Drive
             Setup 1.7.2 to repartition my drive, but again I've seen no apparent problems.
             Thanks for your time, love the site . . .
             Dion Cautrell
             Department of English
             University of Florida"

       Another reader comment from a PowerComputing clone:

             "I have a PowerBase 180 (virtually identical to a 6400) and have a Maxtor 8.4
             IDE. No problems using Disk Setup 1.7.1."

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More on Older IDE Macs/Drive Setup: More reader feedback on the issue noted by an Apple dealer in yesterday's
       news. 

             " Hi Mike. I saw the info about Drive setup and 6400's and had to let you know my results. I have 2
             6400's (one came with a 1.6G Western Digital drive and the other aa 2.4G Quantum drive) and have
             not had any trouble with my drives at all. The 2.4G Quantum has seen all the Drive Setup versions
             starting from what it shipped with through 1.7.3 and I never had a Flashing ?. Even version 1.3 which
             caused so much trouble in the 6400 community didn't phase my systems. The 1.6G Western Digital
             was sold and replaced with a Maxtor 5.7G and is now running version 1.7.3 with no problems. The
             Western Digital drive had the Version that shipped with OS 8.5.1 on it and it too never had any
             problems. 

             Could it be possible that the Performa line had some bad mother boards (IDE controller chip or ROM)
             that is causing these issues? I know of many people that never had a hiccup and others that have HD
             issues constantly! So many in fact that they had to have them replaced several times! I would hate to
             think it might have been the driver causing all these issues the whole time.
             Tom Koons "

       Tom runs a page that every 6400 owner should visit called the 6400 Zone. A Performa 6200 owner reported no
       problems with drive setup 1.7.3 so far with a 800MB IDE drive. This Sonnet G3 upgraded 5400 owner did report
       problems, but I've asked him if they are present without the G3 upgrade, which could be the cause of the problems as
       well: 

             " I have a Performa 5400, then I bought a sonnet g3 card, and I followed their advice of upgrading the
             drive set up with 1.7.x (x=2 or 3, cannot remember), which was included in their floppy. 

             Since then:
             G3 card + VM on (or Ram Doubler) give continues crashes. Sound does not play smoothly and the
             machine hungs up from time to time: it seems that this occures when the CPU looks in the HD, in fact. 
             Much better when VM is off. 

             I had experience indeed the '?' at start up. [did you reselect the startup disk in the control panel?-Mike]
             Restarting with a SyJet SCSI I had the messages that it was unable to locate the HD. Never occured
             before. But then after a restart or two, or three, using the System in the SyJet the HD reappeard again. 

             Cannot say where is the problem. But certainly the Drive setup upgrade makes me think!
             Gianpaolo Mariutti "

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Another reader wrote of problems: 

             "When I first purchased my Performa 6400, I would only use it a few hours before the data was so
             corrupted that it would not even show up on the desktop without using a utility to mount it and
             reinitialize it. Since it was under warranty, I called apple, who promptly sent out a repair technician. He
             stated this was a common issue with the 6400. He said the problem was caused by a defective
             motherboard or a defective Hard Disk. My 6400 had a Western Digital Hard Disk. He said Western
             Digitals are usually good drives, but this particular model was a lemon. In other words, there were a
             greater number of defective units than normal. Since it was apparently more cost effective, he replaced
             both my Mother board and the hard drive with a Quantum Drive. To this day I haven't had any
             problems with the 6400 other than the usual ocasional problems which can be repaired with a disk
             repair utility.
             Marty Fender "

       I do note that of those that did report problems, most all were using Western Digital drives. However the majority of
       owners report no problems with any version of drive setup.