Help!

I have a Maxtor One Touch III that was my son's. I am trying to use the drive on my laptop,windows found the drive installed the drivers and everything but windows does not see it . The drives comes on and was working before. He says that he used an encription program with the drive before but does not remember which one and if he took the encription off is there anyway to unlock this drive . I akmost forgot I am running windows Xp Pro.

 

We need to make sure we are not confusing terms. "Lock" and "Unlock" have specific meanings when talking about drives, and have nothing to do with encryption or decryption. Is something telling you the drive is "locked"? Did he encrypt the drive (or root folder) with some program and you need to decrypt it? Or do you just want to use the drive?

Which one what? Encryption program, or the password? In any event, if he does not remember the password, you are probably sunk, especially if the password is used as a key in the encryption algorithm.

If all you had to do to defeat an encryption program is delete the encryption program, it would be a pretty lousy encryption program, huh?

If all you want to do is use the drive, that is start fresh with it, I would strongly urge you to just format it, which may be all it needs anyway. Kids tend not to be well disciplined when it comes to using the Internet and security. A full (not quick) format would be wise to ensure no malware is hiding on that disk, waiting to infect your computer.

 

Sorry I should have been more clear when I pluged the drive in windows found it and then installed the drivers ,when I tried to find the drive it does not even show up it is like it is not even there . I did a reboot and then went to my computer and it does not show up I have even went in to manage again not there or in hardware profiles I have tried on three other computers all the same . Yes he ran an encription program and said that the whole drive was encripted . I am stuck now . Thanks for the info

 

It sounds like it installed the drivers for the One-Touch enclosure, but that the drive itself is not formatted, or not seen as formatted. If you right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management, do you see this drive? If so, can you right click on it and select format?

 

The laptop I am usein is about 4 yrs old and the drive is a 200gig, I have got the computer to see the drive as a mass storage device but it will not let me talk to it or assign it a drive letter either . I am about ready to throw it into the trash . I have used a 250 gig drive with this computer before so I know it use to see larger drives if that helps .

 

Did you try to format it?

 

the only place I can see the drive is in hardware profiles under the usb tab I cannot access the drive or even see it as a drive not even in the bios it is like it is not even there when I go into the profile area and click on it all it says is that it is working properly but won't let me access it. So I can not even format it

 

I really don't know. Are you sure the enclosure has power? You can try a different USB port, or even remove all USB devices, and try reinstalling them. Sadly, USB has never been reliable - hopefully the new USB3.0 standard will fix it.

 

Thanks for all the advise I will try it in linux to see if that will help I will also try to remove the drivers for the usb .