Maxtor One Touch Not Recognized on 3 different PCs

iZesta · July 14th, 2009, 12:37 AM

My internal hard drive died. That's the reason why we buy external dries to back up our data. And I backed up my data on the Maxtor.

But when I installed the Maxtor on my other PC so I could access my data, couldn't get anything to work. Maxtor was originally installed on an XP machine. After that internal drive died, I tried installing Maxtor on 2 different Vista machines, and another XP machine. As others have stated on this forum, Windows says it was installed and ready, the drive is visible in Device Manager, which shows that the drive is working properly, but it does not appear in My Computer.

Not being able to get anything going on 3 different machines seems very strange.

Anyone familiar with this?

I really need help. My entire life of tax files are on this external drive. My backup was not a backup.

Thanks.

iZesta · July 15th, 2009, 09:05 PM

I am so disappointed not to have received any responses. Not even a guess anyone?

There must be something logical going on with the external drive that a tech might see. I hope. Seems illogical (and very unlucky) that my internal hard drive AND the Maxtor external would go bad at the very same time.

The Maxtor was working fine before my desktop died.

Somebody, anybody have a thought?

Please?

kb6hoh · July 16th, 2009, 12:47 AM

1st of all sorry to hear the problems you are having!

2nd do nothing thru Windows. Im assuming you just copied files on to the Ext HDD or
did you use Maxtor's databackup software?

3rd or did you just copy files from the HDD that went bad to the Ext drive.
Also is the drive one of Maxtor's One Touch Backup drives.

4th If Windows sees the Ext drive in the Disk Management but not under "My Computer"
take the HDD to a Computer Repair shop that you trust. Their are Data Recovery
software programs like Ontrack's " EASY RECOVERY PROFESSIONAL" and so forth.
Also their are Data Recovery Company's that can also recover date from HDD's
that have been thru Fire's, Flood's and Earthquakes. One Company I would highly
recommend is "Drive Saver's" in Novato California. FYI I use to work for CompUSA as
a Tech, Tech Admin and have used Drivesavers for customers DOA HDD's. BUT be aware its not a cheap venture. They donot just select the files you need they recover the entire HDD. It cannot hurt to give them a call @ 1-800-440-1904. Checkout their Website. Click on the link: DriveSavers Data Recovery – Hard Drive, Disk, & RAID Data Recovery Services. Hope this helps some. Good luck.

Steve

kb6hoh@comcast.net

Quote:

Originally Posted by iZesta

My internal hard drive died. That's the reason why we buy external dries to back up our data. And I backed up my data on the Maxtor.

But when I installed the Maxtor on my other PC so I could access my data, couldn't get anything to work. Maxtor was originally installed on an XP machine. After that internal drive died, I tried installing Maxtor on 2 different Vista machines, and another XP machine. As others have stated on this forum, Windows says it was installed and ready, the drive is visible in Device Manager, which shows that the drive is working properly, but it does not appear in My Computer.

Not being able to get anything going on 3 different machines seems very strange.

Anyone familiar with this?

I really need help. My entire life of tax files are on this external drive. My backup was not a backup.

Thanks.

iZesta · July 16th, 2009, 10:06 AM

Thanks Steve for replying.

Let me follow up by making sure I presented my issue clearly.

The hard drive drive dying on my desktop was just a random thing. I already had my data backed up on the Maxtor One Touch Plus using the software backup program. I was in the habit of doing it every day. I have not tried to do anything with backup after my desktop died. The files had already been backed up.

I was merely attempting to hook up the Maxtor to another one of the 3 computers we have so I could access that data. I also want to be able to use the Maxtor again. It was a rather pricey 500 gig backup drive that should not be a piece of trash. I'm not able to get it functioning on another machine, but I was surely hoping there was some technical glitch and not that the Maxtor is necessary a bad drive.

As I mentioned in my follow up to this thread, the Maxtor external was working just fine when it was hooked up to my desktop that died. Only after I tried to use it with another PC did I have problems.

Lots of people online have mentioned having this same problem with Maxtor external drives. So I was also thinking I might have the same problem.

I guess I'm trying to say I would like to first diagnose the problem with the Maxtor before jumping in to pay big bucks to salvage the data.

It boggles my mind that a company would make a product so unfriendly to use when it's intent was to have it to back up data we want and need.

Should not be much more difficult than disconnecting a printer from one pc and hooking it up to aniother. Basically, that's the process I'm following, only with a drive. But it won't work.

I read on another forum that removing the password from the Maxtor before installing on a new machine might help, but I can't do that because I can no longer access the original machine.

FYI, yesterday, I tried to install it again on my other XP machine. This time, I got a message box pop saying the driver works best with a high speed USB port and that my computer had no high speed ports. That's fine. I would certainly install a high speed drive if I believed it would help. But the message said it would work "best" with a high speed usb drive. It's not working at all.

I did not get this install message when trying it on the Vista machines. They both have high speed usb drives.

Steve, does this extra bit of info help any?

If not, I do appreciate your first reply.

Many thanks.

Carol

Imperion1 · July 17th, 2009, 02:41 PM

Have you installed the software for the Maxtor One Touch on the other computers?
Downloads | Seagate
You didn't say which Maxtor One Touch you had, so I couldn't give you a direct link for the software.

iZesta · July 18th, 2009, 05:06 PM

Success !!!!

THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU

Emphasis Intended.

Though I had visited the Seagate site and thought I had read and done everything, I think in my haste and anxiety, I just worked too quickly.

At your suggestion, I took another shot and went there again.

Sure enough, I missed where I had to install something called "OneTouch4Lite" software. Before, the software was not installing because the drive was locked - which I had read could be a problem. This OneTouch software gets around the locked drive and it installed with no problem.

Again, thanks Imperion - so very much.

There are countless questions and threads on Google about this and lots of Maxtor-bashing because of it. I wonder if other people are like me - just not reading all the information

What a great day.

Imperion1 · July 19th, 2009, 01:59 AM

Glad you got it working.

bfry123 · July 30th, 2009, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iZesta

My internal hard drive died. That's the reason why we buy external dries to back up our data. And I backed up my data on the Maxtor.

But when I installed the Maxtor on my other PC so I could access my data, couldn't get anything to work. Maxtor was originally installed on an XP machine. After that internal drive died, I tried installing Maxtor on 2 different Vista machines, and another XP machine. As others have stated on this forum, Windows says it was installed and ready, the drive is visible in Device Manager, which shows that the drive is working properly, but it does not appear in My Computer.

Not being able to get anything going on 3 different machines seems very strange.

Anyone familiar with this?

I really need help. My entire life of tax files are on this external drive. My backup was not a backup.

Thanks.

bfry123 · July 30th, 2009, 06:38 PM

I had the same problem. My Maxtor OneTouch drive was not recognized in My Computer or Windows Explorer. The drive was on and running and the computer made a sound when connected to my laptop (I am using Windows XP Pro).
I spoke to a Seagate tech and went through the process of right clicking My Computer, clicking Device Manager and then expanding "Disk Drives" to see if the Maxtor was listed... it was!
Then you need to go down to the list to "Universal Serial Bus controllers" and expand that list. You should see something that says "USB Mass Storage device" and no Exclamation or Question marks.
If all that is found, this will fix your problem....
Go to the left side of the page and select "Disk Management" under the Storage folder.
Your externnal drive should be there but WITHOUT a drive letter! Right click the external drive without a drive letter and select "Change drive letter and paths"
Try selecting the first drive letter possible and see if you can then see it in Explorer (it has to be the same one that was selected on the original computer). It may take a while to find the correct one but it allowed me access to ALL the data on the hard drive that was not seen before!