Can't access a Maxtor USB external drive

Hello All,

A friend of mine (honest – I’m not just saying that to avoid censure for not backing up) has a Maxtor 1TB USB external drive that has stopped working properly. He does not think he has done anything to cause the problem.

Now when he connects to it it asks to be reformatted and further progress stops.

I have connected it to my computer with the same result.

Unfortunately on this disk are all the photograph of his son from birth to 3 years old as well as a lot more stuff – so loosing it would be a disaster. His wife is a bit upset.

He has downloaded some software from Maxtor which appears to confirm that the files are there but will not allow them to be saved elsewhere.

Can anyone help? Any response will be appropriately acknowledged.

 

Hi,

Windows can be tricky with partitions just disappearing and thus the message that the disk is RAW and needs to be formatted.

You could try partition software in Windows to rewrite the partition table so that it will be recognized but it is not an exact science and there may be trial and error.

I think if it were me I would boot a computer from a Linux disc and see if it allows copying with no adjustments to the partition table. That way he has a copy of his files and then he can go ahead and try to get the external seen in Windows.

Booting from a Linux CD is fairly easy and there is no installation, you are running directly off the CD and memory with no changes to the installed OS. You just nee a blank CD.

Parted Magic is a decent version and will boot up to a Windows looking desktop with a My Documents icon up in the top left that should show your various storage devices. You can check if it sees the files on the external drive and then we can get the files copied. If it doesn't show the files then we can work on rewriting the partition table.

You would download PartedMagic and unzip the ISO file and then write the ISO file to blank CD/DVD using Imgburn's "Write Image File to Disc" option (or similar burning software if you have one you like). You must use the IMAGE file option to make the disc bootable. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61 Then boot any computer from the disc going with the default Run from RAM option. Open My Documents and you will see various icons for storage devices, usually with some indication of size, and click on your external's icon and see if it lists the files.

If it lists the files then you can copy them to another storage device either internal HD or another external or flash USB drive.

I'm just giving you one way of doing it. Other than burning the CD, if you are unfamiliar with that process, the above would be fairly simple. If you prefer to work only in Windows I can recommend a couple of partitioning software that may help and try to guide you but I can't give clear cut instructions it will be step by step to try to get the drive recognized. It sounds like the drive is functioning, Windows just won't see the partition correctly.

Let me know what you are considering.

 

Thanks for your input sach2.

That’s a lot to take in and possibly beyond what I feel comfortable with.

Over the weekend I have run a simple deleted file recovery routine which has retrieved over 1,000 jpg files and over 500 video clips.

I am sending the results to my friend to see if I have got all that was stored on the disk; if not we may have to follow your proposal.

I will report again if this is not the end of the matter.

Thanks again.