I have a Maxtor onetouch 4. I want to use it as an external hard drive. Windows explorer recognizes it but when I try to copy files to it, it says the drive is write protected. I down loaded the Maxtor software, but it seems to only want to allow a backup of my C:\ drive. I do not want a backup, I want to move music files to it and use it as an external hard drive. Any ideas?

By 'install' I think you mean install Maxtor Manager, but perhaps you have files which were saved by 'drag-and-drop' with the previous OS. These might be recovered the same way, even in Vista, if you can open the OneTouch from Control Panel. To use Manager with the OneTouch which had stuff saved via Manager with a different OS, you could first try to recover the files with Manager installed on another PC using the old OS version. Then format the OneTouch through Control Panel in Vista and with luck Manager will recognise it. If it does not, and you can see the drive in My Computer, then uninstall Manager (which might be corrupt) and try re-installing it. Regards Chas

You could explore the drive by clicking on it in My Computer, and try copying your files, or drag and drop them into your desktop etc.

Yes, macs and pc's use different file systems.
You would need to reformat the drive to fat or ntfs for it to work on the PC.
Have a look here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/allcam/pc2mac.html

http://www.seagate.com/support/external-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/onetouch-iii

Remove the hard drive from the Maxtor case, purchase an USB hard drive adapter case, and install the hard drive inside this case. Then you can connect this to the computer's USB port and if the hard drive is OK then this computer will detect it as an external USB hard drive, then you can open the folders and files and back them up.

Probably not the right answer for your problem. Mine is an external 1 TB Simple Drive. Mine wouldn't respond at all. I unplugged the power cable from the back of the hard drive and replugged it in and instantly it worked. I had tried rebooting the computer, plugging/unplugging over and over into the computer and that didn't work.

Go to the maxtor site and download the windows 7 patch

Please Make sure you External Hard disk USB cable is working correctly. Your cable is probably having partial contact, so try another cable

If files you are trying to restore are encrypted you will have to use same software to retrieve them.. If not, any file in the external hard drive should be viewable with your windows explorer.

And U do not need drivers for external hard drives. They just plug into your usb port and work with modern OS after the unit is recognized.