Maxtor OneTouch II, 100GB - Power Failure - Tech Support Forums

ljohnson1124 · December 23rd, 2007, 06:52 PM

I have a Maxtor OneTouch II, 100GB external hard drive. My husband recently relocated our pc within our home and while doing so he plugged the wrong power supply into our Maxtor hard drive. We have also had a few power surges at our home over the past few weeks. One or the other, I feel, has caused this issue with my drive. It is completely powerless. I have plugged it in to different outlets and I have plugged the USB cable into different ports and the drive will not turn on at all. It doesn't make a sound.

I thought that perhaps I could take the drive out of its casing and install it inside our Dell Dimension 8400 in hopes of recovering our family photos and other extremely important personal data. But, the casing is made so that it would be extremely difficult to get the drive out without damaging it.

Has anybody else had a similar problem and if so are you aware of a way to recover the data or do you feel the data is probably gone?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Sincerely,
Lisa Johnson

osprey4 · December 24th, 2007, 09:25 AM

Hi, Lisa:

Well, the good news is that it's unlikely you fried the drive. The bad news is that you probably have no choice but to disassemble the case to get the drive out. My experience has shown that Maxtors are generally just an IDE drive inside an enclosure. So you'll probably damage the case, but it's no good anyway.

See if these instructions are helpful.

ljohnson1124 · December 24th, 2007, 09:38 AM

Thanks for your prompt reply. The news is reassuring - - Hopefully, I will be able to get the case off without damaging the drive. My case is different from the one shown in the link provided, but I'm sure it is possible to get to the drive. Thanks again - - Lisa

NJPitcher · January 4th, 2008, 03:20 PM

I have a 300gb maxtor II, and mine just recently died as well - the one thing I noticed was that the power cord has a green light on it, and mine blinks now. I had never looked at it before, so I don't know if it always blinked, but I'm wondering if it's the power cord, or if my drive died like yours - any chance you could check to see if maybe it's your actual cord (or if your cord blinks), because I was going to just buy another cord, but that may turn out to be a waste of money? Thanks, hope all worked out.

rdurdle · March 16th, 2008, 07:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJPitcher

I have a 300gb maxtor II, and mine just recently died as well - the one thing I noticed was that the power cord has a green light on it, and mine blinks now. I had never looked at it before, so I don't know if it always blinked, but I'm wondering if it's the power cord, or if my drive died like yours - any chance you could check to see if maybe it's your actual cord (or if your cord blinks), because I was going to just buy another cord, but that may turn out to be a waste of money? Thanks, hope all worked out.

I have the same Maxtor and apparently the same problem. The green light on my power adapter will light if I turn the unit off but will blink and just about go off when I turn the power switch on. (Like you never noticed before if this was normal or not.) There is no power going to the drive and I am wondering if it is the drive or the adapter. Unlike Lisa, above, there were no power surges and it just sat in the same place since I hooked it up last July. It just stopped working. Did you try another power cord and if so did it work?

Thanks

Reg
NL, Canada

Rootstonian · March 16th, 2008, 11:58 AM

You can "hope" you shorted out something before it hit the hard drive, but don't get your hopes up too much.

We had a couple of brown-outs a couple of years ago and it toasted our Maxtor drive. 200 gigs of data and digital pictures and music gone. One of the reasons that I now keep 4 copies of any given hard drive in our house!

animin · April 3rd, 2008, 05:04 PM

rdurdle and NJPitcher, I have the exact same problem. Mine died last night after 5 mths. This is extremely frustrating as I had to erase my pc hard drive so ALL my important work is on the Maxtor. Obviously it's a faulty machine...Maxtor's solution? Give us $700+ and we will try to get your data. I am outraged at that. Has anyone got anything taken care of with theirs? I am ready to void my warranty and open the box, frankly I wouldn't trust another one with my data. I'm a novice so If anyone can suggest where to get a new case or anything else that could help me I'd appreciate it.

ICanFly! · April 7th, 2008, 08:00 PM

My Maxtor 500GB One Touch III did the same thing tonight. Blue light flashes slowly and green power cord light alo flashes. I have another identical unit, so I plugged its power cord to the broken unit. Same deal.

I've read a few solutions including this one:

"Solution:
1.Purchase a hard drive enclosure
2. Carefully open the Maxtor drive and remove the hard drive by carefully unscrewing the dirve and disconnecting the 40 pin ribbon cable from the drive --- (the new enclosure comes with a new ribbon cable) You will have to break the seal and burst the from decorative peice off the pop the rivets off so that the drive slides out of the case
3. Install the hard drive in the new enclousre
4. Connect the enclosure to your computer -- enclosure comes with power supply and USB cables etc.
5. Turn your computer off an back on
6. Drive works as just another disk -- dont need the Maxtor drivers and dont need the Maxtor name"

Has anyone done anything like this after the power went on their Maxtor unit? I have 365GB of media files and I pretty much assume they are gone forever but...hope springs eternal.

And regarding point 4 above...when it says the power supply is included with the enclosure...do all hard drives run off the same power supply?

Thanks for any replies.

Artistmarkets · April 22nd, 2008, 11:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ljohnson1124

I have a Maxtor OneTouch II, 100GB external hard drive. My husband recently relocated our pc within our home and while doing so he plugged the wrong power supply into our Maxtor hard drive. We have also had a few power surges at our home over the past few weeks. One or the other, I feel, has caused this issue with my drive. It is completely powerless. I have plugged it in to different outlets and I have plugged the USB cable into different ports and the drive will not turn on at all. It doesn't make a sound.

I thought that perhaps I could take the drive out of its casing and install it inside our Dell Dimension 8400 in hopes of recovering our family photos and other extremely important personal data. But, the casing is made so that it would be extremely difficult to get the drive out without damaging it.

Has anybody else had a similar problem and if so are you aware of a way to recover the data or do you feel the data is probably gone?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Sincerely,
Lisa Johnson

Artistmarkets · April 22nd, 2008, 11:34 AM

I have a new Maxtor 500 GB. I successfully backed up my computer about a month ago and again last night. This morning I was using my computer when a window appeared asking me to reinsert the disconnected device (Maxtor). The power supply to it, evidently went dead and did not repower when plugged into a different outlet or with the USB exchanged for the firewire. This Maxtor does not have an on/off switch and has a simple power supply cord with no box or lights on it. I still have all my data on my computer,
so nothing is lost if I cannot recover. Any suggestions?

Macbook Pro Duo Laptop Mac 10.4.11