Maxtor external not recognized -- 'parameter is incorrect'

I've had a USB 120 gig, FAT32, external Maxtor Hard Drive for at least 2 yrs so it's out of warrenty -- it's ALWAYS worked on any of my pcs (running either xp professional or xp home edition, laptops and desktops). Now, it is not recognized by any of the pcs. When I hook it up, 'my computer' is ssllloooowwwww to show it, and when it finally does show and I go to it, I get an error message that says "the parameter is incorrect". When I try to go to the drive in dos, I get the same message. When I try to run the dos command chkdsk /f f:, all I get is the type of file system is FAT32 (duh) . . . and then windows says chkdsk has encountered a problem and must close. . .

I've also gone to Disk Manager in the Computer Management, and it shows the drive, says it's healthy. Since I'm unfamiliar with this program, so don't really know if I can use it to 'fix the parameters' whatever the #### they are . . .

Anyway, does anyone have any ideas, can anyone help??
please
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

Here is a link to some an interesting thread that may answer some questions.
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7590-0.html?forumID=67&threadID=28919&messageID=340465

Read on down from here and also first poster.

 

Stardis -- WOW!! Thanks for turning me onto the thread, it looks like this is a common problem. Btw, the chkdsk command didn't work, nor any of the 'soft' solutions. . . So, when I get more time I'll install the drive to a workstation and see if it works -- or get an usb harddrive enclosure and continue using it as an external. Hopefully one of these fixes will work.

mmm, with all these folks having the same problem with Maxtor one-touches, you'd think Maxtor would have a quick solution, or perhaps design the drive right to begin with to eliminate the problem altogether.

Anyway, again, thanks!!