Maxtor One Touch III USB 2

Good Morning,

I write grant proposals (on a voluntary basis) for a non-profit charitable
organization, and they sent me the Maxtor external drive full of data. I am
running a Dell XPS 410 with Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit). This bugger
tells me I have to initialize the disk!

I am NOT computer savy these days (old age) and do not understand many
technical terms - such as, I haven't a clue what SATA is. Thus, much
troubleshooting has left me in the dark.

Some groups say that I will not lose data when initializing; others say I
will. Obviously, I do not want to lose this data as it's necessary for
proposals. As well, I tried reading this drive on an HP Pavilion with Vista
Home. Same results.

I am so frustrated. I've never had so many problems with something that
should be so 'plug and play' easy! Does anyone know what steps I need to
take to access the data on the drive?

Thanks much.

"Keysmiata" <hmiata@hotmail.com.(donotspam)> wrote in message
news:29123061-B7DE-4C7F-8198-9CB99C938D18@microsoft.com...
> Good Morning,
>
> I write grant proposals (on a voluntary basis) for a non-profit charitable
> organization, and they sent me the Maxtor external drive full of data. I
> am
> running a Dell XPS 410 with Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit). This bugger
> tells me I have to initialize the disk!
>
> I am NOT computer savy these days (old age) and do not understand many
> technical terms - such as, I haven't a clue what SATA is. Thus, much
> troubleshooting has left me in the dark.
>
> Some groups say that I will not lose data when initializing; others say I
> will. Obviously, I do not want to lose this data as it's necessary for
> proposals. As well, I tried reading this drive on an HP Pavilion with
> Vista
> Home. Same results.
>
> I am so frustrated. I've never had so many problems with something that
> should be so 'plug and play' easy! Does anyone know what steps I need to
> take to access the data on the drive?
>
> Thanks much.
>
>

Maxtor One Touch III support is by Seagate at:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/

A quick check at Seagate indicates that initializing a drive will result in
loss of all data on the drive. All references I found to initialize a One
Touch III were in the context of using the drive on a Apple OS.

Suggest you:
1. Check with the people to gave you the drive to determine what type of
computer was used to store data on the drive.
2. Check more completely that I did with Seagate Support {Info: Seagate now
owns Maxtor}.

Don