Disk manager from Maxtor

This problem affects old PC’s that are at least 8 years old and which aren’t equipped with plug and play. Yet many of those old computers are still in use and that can not be equipped with a new BIOS ROM.

When users of old PC’s want to install a new hard disk they have a problem.
One workaround for this created by some hard disk manufacturers have been to use a Disk Manager utility, a software which modify how the hard disk I/O works.
Some hard disk producers bundled a Disk Manager or EZ-Drive together with an accompanied diskette.

One such product is the Maxtor’s Maxblast 4 which was is an OEM version of EZ-Drive which you can download for free. EZ-Drive was created by Micro House.
Another firmware product is Disk Manager from Ontrack. The Disk Manager provided by Maxtor Corp. has also gone under the name MaxBlast.
Western Digital a hard disk manufacturer have also bundled an OEM version of EZ-Drive or Disk Manager.

These utilities use a technique with overlay drives to translate address information so that it can access and work with larger disks above 512 MB.

The best would be if the BIOS in used could handle addressing of the hard disk. If you move up to a new motherboard with a more modern BIOS, then upgrade to a larger hard disk and copy your disk data which also contain the Disk Manager on it, then you have two options.

1. Keep the disk manager:
You can in many cases continue to use Maxtor Disk Manager or EZ-Drive with your hard disk, but this is not recommended as it adds complexity to the I/O interaction. It will also slow down the hard disk transfer speed.

However if you do, then the easiest method would be to set the CMOS parameters to the same on the new BIOS and disable the disk translation by having ”Large Disk DOS Compatibility” on the advance screen disabled.
If you happen to later remove the Disk Manager then this option should be enabled.

2. Remove the disk manager:
Both the Disk Manager from Maxtor or EZ-Drive is stored on the hard disk’s boot sector. It can’t be removed by just reformatting the drive. Most versions of disk manager and EZ-drive have a uninstall function: For how to remove it see the documentation from the manufacturer.
Make sure that before you try to remove it, you first take a backup of your drive or clone your disk.

For Disk Manager 6.x from Ontrack just remove the NON-DOS partition by using FDISK and then recreate a DOS partition and format the drive.

To remove Disk Manager 7.x from Ontrack, boot from a clean floppy, insert the Disk Manager diskette. Then start the Disk Manager by writing DM and Select “Maintenance Menu” from the main menu. From there select “Uninstall Disk Manager”.
If you just remove the NON-DOS partition using FDISK it will not work to remove the Disk Manager 7.x.
Included with the Disk Manager comes often the driver DMDRVR.BIN which is install in CONFIG.SYS. This is normally the case if the disk Manager is installed on a drive other then the boot drive. You have to remove this drive after restoring from a backup.

EZ-Drive has a uninstall function and it is possible to remove EZ-Drive without any data loss in most cases.

There is however a recommended and better alternative:
Instead of using a Disk Manager Overlay driver for accessing larger disk use an ATA/66 card. This will support drives as large as 128 GB.