On Sat, 08 May 2004 00:05:31 GMT, river_kwai
wrote:

I have configured the drive as Cable Select, I did load setup defaults
after flashing BIOS. I did everything and this annoying probloem is
still there!

This is the response I get from Maxtor:

Further to your request, I understand that your computer system hangs
and
gives the error message Verifying DMI Pool Data. This error is
associated
with computer that have an Award BIOS only. It has been determined
that
this error is not attributed to a hardware failure, or error with a
hard
drive. Take a look at the following knowledge base article for a
better
understand, and possible solution for the error.

And the quoted the Maxtor knowledge base article:

http://tinyurl.com/283yv

They don't seem helpful and I am wondering if all people with Maxtor
HDD on Award BIOS would have such problems. I don;t think that's the
case as it would have meant many unhappy customers, but yet Maxtor
seemed not to be able to help. If the problem lies between Maxtor HDD
and Award BIOS, is requesting an RMA going to solve my problem?

The majority of systems I have here are using an Award BIOS of one version
or another, and none of them (that I'm aware of) have this problem. In
fact I do have one of those Maxtor drives, a 5T040H4, that RMA replaced
another of that same model... after a few months of use it began making an
odd chirp-like "beeping" sound, which I can only assume was a bearing
defect. However that particular drive would periodically not show up in
bios enumeration screen and running the diagnostics produced an error code
applicable towards RMA. That was over 2 years ago, today the replacement
is still running fine.

Perhaps there was some issue with the 5T040H4 drives, or perhaps it's
partly to blame on both the drive and the motherboard, but you've already
tried 2 different motherboards making motherboard less likely to be the
problem.... it is not simply an issue of it being an Award bios.

If you RMA the drive "now", there's a quite good chance you'd receive a
different, newer drive that may work even if the motherboard/bios is
partly to blame, or even same drive but with a firmware that doesn't cause
this. The puzzling part isn't the delay at "verifying DMI...", it's that
the drive continues to take so long to boot the OS after it passed that
stage in the boot process. I would focus on that issue, use that as the
reason for the RMA.