Need technical help: external drive not detected anymore - ALL my photo's are on this drive....

Hi everyone, I need some technical help:
I have the Maxtor one-touch 4 USB drive (500GB). I bought it about a month ago. I copied all my image-files onto it.

Yesterday something terrible happened: The drive is not accessible anymore, it does not show up as a drive in windows-explorer.

I did restarts, replugged everything - it is still not detected.
However it does show up as an unknown component in the device-manager, but I cannot install it - no drivers are found. Even if I manually select the folder wherein the drivers for that drive are located...
I went to the manufacturer's website (seagate) and did the trouble-shooting-steps (downloading the software etc...)
No success.

So, anyone ever experienced something similar? What should I do? Send in the whole drive to get my data rescued?

Thanks for any good advices or for sharing similar experiences...

Dietrich


Btw, I do have my photo's spread over dozens of DVDs, and CDs, so I still have access to them.

Dietrich, I would start by trying to use the external drive on another PC and see if that one detects it.

This is scary. It has happened to me. I now backup in two locations. Any special photos (favorites) I also put on a DVD-DL. I lost some great images... once

Dietrich, scary situation no doubt, especially as I have the same drive and it is about 4 months old now, UGH! As a safe guard I have two drives after fighting back from previous recoveries in the past. I would try Jim's idea and maybe even try a few other devices on the same USB port(s). I suspect if the drive is at complete fault trying it on another PC would bring that to the surface. Good luck.

Hi , thanks for the responses so far. Yes, I will do that - trying to use the drive on another PC. No PC around at the moment. The idea was to store everything I have on one drive, organizing my files, deleting bad images, and then burn everything on DVD with a neat and ordered structure.
You know what is cynic: The slogan on the users manual: "Save your life"...

Dietrich
Yes a little scary but it can be solved!!!!
Firstly are u using the same USB connection.
Secondly is there a noise coming from your Maxtor???
Thirdly remove all unnecessary USB connections and close all programs.After this restart your computer and then plug the maxtor into the original USB connection and wait for at least 4-5 minutes it sometimes takes time to get going.Also dissconnect any firewall etc. that you have.
This should get it going again

I have a program that can sometimes detect drives that Windows can not. It is called testdisk and can be downloaded from http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Main_Page.

If the problem is software related (i.e. you don't have a faulty hardware issue like bad platters in the drive) then this software may work well. In the world of computers there is no guarantee but I have had good luck with data recovery with this software.

By the way ... it is free.

I had a similiar problem once and it turned out to be the USB cable. If you have another with the same connecters then I would try replacing the cable and restarting both the pc and the external drive. Evidently if a strand within faults it can mean loosing the i.d to i.d connection bit that makes the two familiar to eachother.

If this fails then try running a virus scan on your pc then deleting and reinstalling the drivers. If you run Vista then it should see the external drive even without dedicated drivers and so you may even find that Vista is confused which driver to use and so having a vista style hissy fit.

You should also try connecting it to a different port. Sometime port failure or partial failure can also cause the same problem. In fact, I would try this first as its the quickest and simplest.

If all the above fails then buy a mac

Thanks for your help! I tried what was available so far, but nothing worked. I have no other usb-cable at hand and I also have no second PC to test.
The "unplugging-everything-deactivating the fire-walls" did not help.
Test-disk did not find the drive...

"Save Your Live"...

Hi ,
Meet my husband Skip.... he is a hardware tech and the only reason I can begin to understand these evil machines... The problem could be the enclosure (box). To check this take the drive out of the enclsure and hook it directly into the PC via the IDE cable or if it's a SATA Drive (newer) the SATA cables. This eleminates the enclosure as the issue. I've experienced this before and that was the case. Once it's up copy file to your internal drive and return defective unit.

Skip

Hi Dietrich, I had this same problem with a similar Maxtor drive. I removed the drive from the box and installed it as a slave internal drive into the PC and everything was fine. It was the controller in the box that went bad. Hope this helps. Also, if you can run a recovery program on the drive that previously had your photos before you copied them, they may still be there.

We get this problem occasionally at work, though I would doubt it has relevance for you. We get this problem when people have mapped in network drives, if the letter allocation is low the drive letter allocation for the USB device fails sometimes.

I would however suggest disconnecting all unnecessary USB devices and reboot with the drive plugged in......you never know!

One slightly dumb suggestion: If you have a second USB cord and/or power source compatible with the drive, plug them in and see what happens. It is vaguely possible the problem is with the supplied cords, and a cheap test.

This has pretty much reached my knowledge for this problem. Good luck.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. First I will try to connect the hard-disk to another pc, most likely I will have the chance tomorrow at work.
The issue with the enclosure/controller makes sense to me. I will try this as well.
Thank you!

Good luck! I would've swallowed my heart and lost my marbles by now…

Dietrich, I hope one of the above suggestions "resurrects" your drive.
Have you tried to call the Maxtor tech support line for help in diagnosing the problem ?

I had a similar problem with a Western Digital drive. Unfortunately that did not have a good outcome, and I had to restore the files from CD + DVD backups ~ 400GB. Believe me, you do NOT want to see the bill for recovering files from a bad disk, so be thankful that you do still have backup copies.

My final diagnosis was that the FAT (file allocation table) was corrupted, and therefore the drive was not recognized. Their solution - reformat the drive. I didn't even get a new replacement drive.

I now have 3 backups on hard drives, in addition to DVD.
Drive space is cheap, especially compared to your time and grief.

Good luck.

Hi Bill, yes I heard that recovering data from a HD is expensive. I now almost have all my photo's back to my internal HD, copied them from my DVD's back to the internal HD again

Testing the drive today at work did not reveal anything new. The drive is "dead"
I actually have no motivation to call the tech-support, all I want is my money back. This 5 year warranty is a joke.

Funny though that a DVD for a few $ is better than a HD that costs me 150$, comes from a respected company, with 5years of warranty.


You know what: I was smart enough not keeping the receipt. I most likely cannot return the drive. Instead I will smash it against a wall
Thanks for your condolences...

Funny though that a DVD for a few $ is better than a HD that costs me 150$, comes from a respected company, with 5years of warranty.

But the DVD will fail too, far more quickly than you might think possible. The best strategy is to have your images on at least two or three different hard drives (in addition to any DVDs you care to burn).

When you say testing the drive at work didn't reveal anything, I'm assuming you still haven't taken the drive out of its enclosure. I'd guess the enclosure is more likely the problem than the drive itself, having had many similar experiences with Maxtor external enclosures (which I now view as junk products). If you need help in removing the drive and connecting it directly to your computer, best take it to a technician.

Hi Cliff, thanks. But one thing to consider: If I manipulate the product on my own - I will loose any warranty - if I have any because my receipt is lost anyway.
I will give this some thought.
Thanks for all your input, I appreciate this very much!

I know that DVDs can fail, however: I bought quite a few DVD's (100+) in my life, all of them worked whenever I wanted them to work.
I buy ONE fu**ing external HD in my life and it is dead after 5 weeks...
By simple statistics this means that HDs are much more likely to not survive...
Just some loud thinking...

This 5 year warranty is a joke.

Sorry if this is a re-hash or pointless for some of you, but hopefully it will help others. As a computer engineer I have one message for everyone - a 5-year warranty in no way means that a product won't or shouldn't fail within 5 years. It simply means that the company is willing to pay the cost of replacement of the amount of drives that they expect (that's right, expect) to fail within 5 years.

For hard drives especially (but most other things as well) there are a certain amount of the product that will fail inside the warranty period. This is true of just about anything manufactured - there's typically a bathtub curve for failures over time (high at both ends and low in the middle). That means a fair amount fail quickly, but those that make it past the first part of the curve last a long time, before all the drives tend to fail at the end.

For hard drives they specify an MTF, or mean time to failure (although not all, and it's not always easy to find). That means that on average, a drive will last that amount of time. But some will fail in a very short amount of time (the initial part of the curve).

Unfortunately, Dietrich, it looks like you got an early fail, and a warranty replacement is standard from the manufacturers point of view. I guess you have to decide if losing the money involved is worth potentially retrieving the data off the drive.

Hopefully all of this emphasizes why multiple backups are often important (and why Dietrich using DVDs worked out great apparently). I've lost two drives in the last 5 years - the first time I had no back up and had to re-do a lot of school work. The second time, I simply restored from backup and was up and running again in an evening...

Hi David!
Thanks for this info. I am aware of this. I even know the bathtub-cuvre (did a quality management course at uni )
But my thought was if a company grants 5 years of warranty, they are very confident that they do not have to deal with customer claims very often.

One update: I considered to send the drive back to seagate/maxtor for a return, but I carefully read the small-print:
-they will never ever return my old hard-disk. This means that I would send off 300GB of my
photos to strangers. No photographer will ever do this, and I wont do this either.

-they do not return you a brand-new drive instead, they will send you a refurbished item.

Lesson learned - use multiple DVD's, thats it.

By the way David, may I ask what brings you to Vienna???

Wrong Vienna Dietrich - there's one here in the states too, in Virginia (VA) just outside of Washington DC. I'd love to get over there to the "real" Vienna at some point though!

I have the 300GB version of this drive. I bought it a couple of years ago and installed in on my Dell machine, running Windows XP, Service Pack 1. It formatted successfully, and I backed up all of my photos. Around 3 months later, the drive was undetectable - same exact symptoms you have. I also couldn't run the diagnostics packaged in the Maxtor software - it couldn't find the drive. I didn't throw it against the wall, but only because I was waiting to beat on it with a 20lb sledge hammer. Glad I didn't though...

When I got a new HP laptop with XP Service Pack 2, the drive worked just fine. I upgraded my Dell to XP SP2 thinking that would solve the problem, but it didn't. The drive continues to work on two separate computers that came installed with SP2. Are you running SP1 or SP2?

I won't buy another Maxtor. I have two Western Digital 500GB HDs, and haven't had one problem, even on the SP1 machine. One I've owned for about two years, the other is about 3 months old. Not sure that they're any better than Maxtor, but so far, so good.

Good luck.

I bought quite a few DVD's (100+) in my life, all of them worked whenever I wanted them to work.
I buy ONE fu**ing external HD in my life and it is dead after 5 weeks...
By simple statistics this means that HDs are much more likely to not survive...

Fallacious conclusion I'm afraid, Dietrich, since you're basing this on one (admittedly entirely negative experience) with hard drives. We statisticians have a saying: there's no such thing as a sample of one.

There are two appropriate conclusions to draw:

1) you were extremely unlucky (because, obviously, if any substantial percentage of external hard drives failed within five weeks of purchase, no one would buy them

2) don't put all your eggs in one basket; the biggest advantage of the DVD backup approach is that even if one fails, your images are so widely spread out among multiple disks that you won't lose everything; the best approach, however, is to have multiple backups, regardless of media. I have four backups of all my RAW files and three backups of all my PS-optimized files, with one full set of everything stored off-site. If a hard drive fails (and one will, no doubt), I have two full sets of optimized files (and three full sets of RAWs) to fall back on. Even if TWO hard drives fail simultaneously, I have a third backup upon which to rely. Now if three hard drives all fail simultaneously, I'll just concede that I'm the unluckiest SOB on the planet (and still have a fourth set of RAW files upon which to rely).

Rick and Kerry, thanks for your responses!
Rick, I am running SP2 but I haven't given up yet. I will try the drive also at my parents place in Vienna, so far I did only test it at work on laptops.
Kerry, thanks, I know, one should not make such pre-mature conclusions, I was just mad. However, it is interesting to note that while I heard quite a few people reporting on failing hard-disks (external and internal, in fact it happened to me before with a desk-top pc), I never had problems with DVD or CDs , except for bad handling like intensive sun-exposure, or high temperatures in the car, or scratches. The thing is, a hard-drive is a so much more complex thing...

I wrote a very angy email to maxtor, regarding the return-option. I will certainly not send in my drive. One never knows where your photo's may show up in the future.

Just one final technical comment: the drive also is quiet, it does not make the typical sound like it did when it worked. The only proof-of-life is the bright diode on the front. I will - since I do not considere sending it in and claiming the warranty - get it opened by a technician and attached as an internal drive as suggested - lets see

Thanks everyone! It is good to hear your success- but also "un-success"-stories, makes me feel not alone...