External Hard Drive Problem

Hello all, and thanks for any help that you may have for me - this is my first post.

I have a Maxter External Hard Drive that has worked fine for me. However now when I plud it into my USB port the drive shows up in My Computer as Local Disk (G but then, when I click it to open it up it waits for a long time and then gives me an error message saying G:\ is not accessible. Error performing inpage operation.
This drive has all my pictures on it from various trips around the world and I don't have back ups (yes yes I KNOW I'm an idiot).

Help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Make sure you have latest drivers for your drive.
What is the model of the drive?

 

Thanks for the reply. It is a 5000DV and I just downloaded the drivers from the Maxtor site and this time when I plugged it in to my USB post it actually said that it recognized it as the 5000DV.....but now it doesn't show up in My Computer at all ??????

 

remove the device.. reboot and then re-connect the drive.

 

Done

This time when I plugged it in it did not recognize it as anything other than a generic device. I opened my computer and it took forever to open and then opened an autoplay window with the dearching flashlight but it didn't appear to find anything.

Then My Computer wouldn't display anything until I unplug the USB cable and then all the information C:,D:, etc including G: (the Maxtor) appears for a split second before, of course, G: is gone because I have unplugged it.

Then I plug the cable back in and it isn't recognized !

AAAAARGGGH......but thanks for your help so far....any more tips ?

 

I shaould also say that everything on the computer slows down when the cable is plugged in and speeds up the moment I remove it....

 

Try a new cable?

 

Nope - same result..... :-(

 

will it recognize in another pc?

 

Good idea...I'll take it to work tomorrow and see.....

thanks for the help today !!

 

if it recognizes on the other pc. I would take the chance to run maxtors diagnositcs on it.. and get your stuff off it too. Then try to trouble shoot further why it won't work on your system.

I'm also assuming this is externally powered.. making sure it's plugged in is obvious, but useful to check as we sometimes miss the obvious

 

I just need to have it recognized for about one hour and I will copy everything off it and throw it away !!!!!

 

No luck. I plugged it into the new computer and it slowed that system down as well. It recognized it as the 5000DV in the bottom right corner but the drive would not come up in My Computer. As before....as soon as I unplugged it the system started to run at normal speed again. It's almost as if it's trying to find the data but gets caught in a loop or something like that.

Any ideas would be VERY welcome !!!!

 

sorry to bump this to the top but I am so desperate to get my files off this hard drive......can anyone help ????????

 

Did you check the other thread by wishfulgeek.
Maybe it is the same problem.

 

thanks for the hint but I did what was recommended and still no luck. I just plugged the drive in and it bleeps at me and the little 'safely remove stuff' arrow appears in the bottom right of my screen but still it won't show up in My Computer and slows the system to a crawl

 

The only other thing I can think of is maybe opening the drive enclosure and seeing if it will support a regular IDE cable and plug it in that way.. I can gurantee anything and you do this at your own risk.

 

Hi argyll,

I had this exact same problem up until an hour ago....First off, my external HD is a 250 GB IDE Maxtor DiamondMax 10, enclosed in a Zynet USB2.0 Enclosure. I logged on here to see if I could get help, but came across this thread and realised that someone else had the same unresolved problem. So I did a bit of research on Maxtor's Knowledge base site and came across this Maxtor Customer Help - Installing Hard Drives

Basically, the reason my external drive was not appearing in My Computer was because it wasn't initialized. I needed to initialize the HD, assign it a drive name and partition it. All this can be done in 'Computer Management' via the Control Panel. Just follow the link above, all the info is there. Just read it from 'Installing a Second Hard Drive' onwards.

I'm no computer expert, so I don't know if this will fix your problem. If your HD is not already initialized, this should solve your problem regards it not appearing in My Computer. If it is already initialized on your system, well, I don't know!

 

Thanks for the linj but unfortunately that didn't work either. The XP disk management system recognized the Maxtor and says that it is functioning fine but I still can't get to my files. That's it - I'm going back to pen and paper............................