Maxtor external 500gb onetouch 4 dead?

[Elvenmunky]

my external hdd isn't being recognized any more. when i plug it in to the pc the white light at the front of it stays on but my pc does nothing at all. it used to work on my ps3 as well but even that doesn't pick it up. any suggestions? thanx

[clocker]

USB interface?
Maybe try a different cable.

No joy?
Open enclosure, pull hard drive and hook directly to motherboard/PSU...see what happens.

[llama85]

Hate to say it but Maxtor is notoriously unreliable...

Like clocker said, try popping out the HD and putting it into your computer.

[Elvenmunky]

yeah was thinking of that, i got a guide from this gu that shows me how to do it, seems pretty straight foreword but im scared of voiding the 5 year warranty.

[Snee]

It could be the partition died, because the drive didn't like the usb drivers for your mobo or something. Happened thrice with one I used to own. It was hilarious. It does sound like how mine behaved after it'd happened. Although it might as well be something else entirely, obviously.

You could give file recovery software a go, to see what happens.

[Elvenmunky]

erm my pc doesn't pick it up at all, no notification comes up when i plug it in

[Snee]

Mine did that too. It was weird as fuck.

Lots of fun figuring out what was wrong.

EDit: Mine wasn't recognised when I plugged it in, and obviously nothing turned up in the disk manager. But for some weirdass reason it did show up after a shitload of fiddling, but only through the recovery software (can't remember what I used though, sorry), at first. And I had to repartition it through another machine after, before it'd work again.

[Elvenmunky]

ok cheers. when you say 'fiddling' can you tell me exactly what you did please. hopefully it will come back for me too. (oh can you try and find out what software you used to)

[Snee]

As I recall I was triple-booting at the time, I think I kept trying to mount it in different operating systems, and I also think I went into the device manager, selected to show hidden devices, then removed it from there, before trying to add it again.

It's been a long time, though. Bit fuzzy on the details.

Funny thing is that, like I said, it did it thrice. I gave it away, though, and it's been working all right since.

But, like I also said, it might be something else entirely, and as has already been stated, maxtor drives are pretty unreliable. So I don't want to get your hopes up

As for what software I used, I think I messed around with more than one program. Checked an old thread where we were discussing it on another board, and something called GetDataBack, as well as File Scavenger and Spinrite were mentioned.

[Elvenmunky]

nice one mate ill try that