I am unable to format my Maxtor One Touch III 500gig External Hard Drive. Once i get to 100% using ms disk manager, a message box pops up saying that it was unable to format the hard drive. In linux when i type in fdisk to format it, a message is returned saying unable to read the table. How can i solve this issue?

To solve this problem:

1. Go to "Control Panel > ... >Disk Management", find your drive there (it will have no letter assigned), right click, choose to assign letter, assign one, DONE.

2. Just for the case, the Maxtor "Software" everyone is talking here of is [currently] at http://www.seagate.com/support/sof [...] us_GM7.exe (thats the link my Maxtor Manager used when trying to update itself [unsuccessfully, hehe], so one can "intercept" it just looking at the error message (as I did), or, probably, with treh help of firewall logs).

Hope this helps,

If this is a NEW drive you will have to set it up first to be used.

Under control panel you will find an icon called "Administrative tools" Under that you will find another option called "computer management", Here you will find another option called, "Disk Management"
This is where you should be able to see the drive. You will need to partition it and format it.. Once you do that it will automatically be assigned a drive letter.
Just right click on it for the partition and format options. Keep the default size options unless you really want them to be different.

the problem is in one of your computers, try System Restore go to previous date at the problem.

Most likely the drive hasn't been initialized. Go to start, right click my computer, then manage. Select disk management on the right column. A window should immediately pop up saying disk initialize wizard. Press next, and it will guide you through on how to initialize the disk. Make sure you format it as well, so that the computer will recognize it as a drive.

the hard disk interface could be broken, open the hard disk case and use it as an internal hard disk as a slave in a computer to save your data

Before runnning the backup please go ahead and run the check disk once..
chkdsk /f/r use this command on the command prompt

first it has to be formated to work with it, use manage by right click on my computer then select disk managment from left pane

Hi
Please connect your hdd and go to disk management right click on my computer on the desktop g to manage and iskmanagement ..
check your hard disk is listed there or no if yes check it have drive letter if no please right click and add drive leter.if its there then check it has a format like it writng ntfs or fat32 if there then rigt click on the left hand side pan and say reactivate if still dosent work may be u need to format it. or use a third party software like hard disk regenerator or mac disk worior...
THANKSAND REGARDS

What Operating system are you using ?

I'll assume your using windows.

Try going to disk management
it may not have any partitions

you can get into the disk management by pressing start --> Control Panel ---> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management --> Disk Management.

Once your in Disk Management you should see the 600gb

After you find it right click and either format / import foreign disk

(This applies to internal hard drive only)
If Hard drive is not listed you may have to set jumpers correctly or check bios to make sure hard drive is detected

You have a possible corrupted file. Open My Computer and right-click the drive icon. Click PROPERTIES in the menu. Click TOOLS. Click CHECK NOW. Click a check into the AUTOMATICALLY FIX FILE SYSTEM ERRORS box. Click START. The OS may tell you a reboot is required.
If all else fails, dump the data to some other storage device and use DISK MANAGER to delete the partion, make a new partition and format.