My maxtor one touch iii is being recongized on the USB port the driver shows its good and everything shows its working properly, but I don't hear the drive spinning and when Windows XP recognizes the drive it doesn't assign it a drive letter so I can't get to my data. What should I do?

If your external harddrive came with software, you may want to reinstall it. If not you may have to go the the website for the Maxtor One Touch 3 and download the driver for the unit.

You may also want to open the device manager and check to see if your usb port is having trouble. More than likely it is the driver itself>

If plugged in the first time, the external drive needs to be initialized from your computer. Here are the steps.

1. Plug in your external drive to your computer's usb port.
2. Right click your My Computer and choose Manage.
3. Click on the Disk Management from the left. The list of available drives will show on the right.
4. Right click on your External drive and select create partition (primary partition).
5. After that you now you need to format the hard drive. Choose quick format.
6. Right click again on the partition you've just created, now select "Format" and select NTFS.
7. Click Ok and follow the wizard as it will guide you until it is finished.

Hope this helps.

They are indeed Mini USB.

Tim

Might try downloading the drivers directly from maxtor

go to my computer proeprty then uninstall usb driver and then right clik any driver then clik on scan for hardware then it searches usb and install automatically.

Try it in another computer if you have one. Or...try it in another USB port on your desktop PC. I would see if it appears in the device manager. If so, and you don't get a drive letter, try running
'diskmgmt.msc' and looking to see if the drive pops up under available drives.

Hi,

Here is the link to download the software for the Maxtor Onetouch III

OneTouch III USB
OneTouch III FireWire 400/USB (all models other than ones starting with FA)

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=ot3-maxbu-vista&vgnextoid=c42f69a859d63110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

Or

OneTouch III FireWire 800
OneTouch III Turbo
OneTouch III FireWire 400/USB models starting with FA

Use this :

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=ot3-emc-vista&vgnextoid=b6623428ab622110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

Good Luck.

Live, Love, Laugh.

First things first;
hello
1) verify the connection
2) you have to change the Disk on another USB port 2.0
3) if you got warranty I suggest you change the device.** if apply.
good luck

reboot the pc, also try a different usb port.

Does Windows recognize that there is anything plugged in at all?

If not it could be your USB interface (on the Maxtor) is shot.