installing external hard drive

[Guest]

I have an external hard drive (Maxtor II). I had it up and working, and used
it to back up my c drive prior to using Norton PartitionMagic.
To cut things short, I've repartitioned a few times, didn't like the reults
(everything ran perfectly, my drive just wasn't big enough to do what I
wanted), each time reformatting and reinstalling windows and the device
drivers.
This time, my computer can't "see" the external drive. It is present on
Device Manager and says its is working, but I can't see it on "My Computer"
or windows explorer. I have tried reinstalling the Maxtor software, Windows,
reformatting and repartitioning several times; have tried to install in safe
mode but the installer won't run.
Any hints on how I can get the external drive recognised again?

 

[Guest]

i should add its a USB 2.0 connection; and i've read the USB tips mentioned

 

[Rock]

i should add its a USB 2.0 connection; and i've read the USB tips mentioned

Is it showing in Disk Management? Right click My Computer | Manage | Disk
Management. Does it show in the right hand pane? If so is a drive letter
assigned to it? If not right click on the drive on the right pane and
assign a drive letter to it.

Troubleshooting for USB drives
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

 

[Guest]

snip

Is it showing in Disk Management? Right click My Computer | Manage | Disk
Management. Does it show in the right hand pane? If so is a drive letter
assigned to it? If not right click on the drive on the right pane and
assign a drive letter to it.

Yes, its present in disk management and it doesn't have a drive letter.
But, when I right click, it won't let me select "assign a drive letter".

 

[Rock]

snip



Yes, its present in disk management and it doesn't have a drive letter.
But, when I right click, it won't let me select "assign a drive letter".

Anything here help?

Troubleshooting for USB drives
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

General USB troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310575

 

[Rock]

No; but while checking out regedit I noticed that Local_Machine | Software
|
Seagate Software there is an icon (ab default) that has no value set; and
a
second icon ab ConfIIs4Msg of REG_SZ type that has data of "could not
initialise COM". Maxtor is owned by Seagate. Not sure if this is
relevant .

Sorry, I don't know.

 

[Guest]

have heard back from maxtor/seagate tech assist; apparently this means the
volume is corrupted and needs to be deleted. lucky me.
thanks for your help and time

 

[Rock]

have heard back from maxtor/seagate tech assist; apparently this means the
volume is corrupted and needs to be deleted. lucky me.
thanks for your help and time

Well at least you have cause and resolution. Sorry it wasn't better. This
does say something about the advantage of having redundancy in backups using
at least two different types of external media.