Maxtor external drive not showing up in Windows Explorer

[Marcus Hamilton]

I just bought a Maxtor One Touch II 200 GB external hard drive for back-up.
I installed the software like it said to do in the manual and then connected
the drive via firewire. Windows immediately recognized it. The Maxtor
software I had installed then gave me a prompt that said basically "this
drive is in FAT, it's recommended that you reformat to NTFS" I clicked ok
and it began the reformat. A couple of minutes later I got a message saying
Format Failed. Now the drive won't show up in Windows Explorer. I tried
rebooting but that didn't help.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks in advance for any help you can
provide. I'm running WinXP Pro by the way.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Right click on My Computer and select Manage. On the following screen,
click on Disk Management.

Does it now show up on the right hand side of the screen? You can partition
it, format it and assign it a drive letter from here.

 

[Marcus Hamilton]

Right click on My Computer and select Manage. On the following screen,
click on Disk Management.

Does it now show up on the right hand side of the screen? You can
partition it, format it and assign it a drive letter from here.

Hey, Cari. Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, it doesn't show up under
Disk Management. Any other ideas? Thanks.

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

Hey, Cari. Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, it doesn't show up
under Disk Management. Any other ideas? Thanks.

Someone in another group had a similar problem with the 300 GB drive. Here
is a copy of what they did to resolve their problem.

I just spent 1+ hr on the phone with Maxtor (partial that long b/c I
rebooted my comp about 8 times)... They DID fix it. They had me disconnect
the drive, unistall the software using the CD it came with. I also had to
connect the external drive to another PC in my office and reformat it (quick
version) - reformat = lose all info on drive. I then installed the CD
software again (with the drive still disconnected). It works now. Call
Maxtor and they will walk you through it... in the USA call 1-800-262-9867