Hello Ifurney,
OK, this a long posting…
1. There could be a problem with the USB cable. Try to replace the cable with
another one and check.
2. Some USB ports on laptop computers do not supply enough voltage, but most
ports do..Try using both the USB connections on the Maxtor. Don't worry, one is
for data transfer and the other is just for supplying extra voltage to the
port. Or you can plug the drive to an AC outlet. If you had connected it to an
external AC source, try unplugging your drive from the power outlet for a few seconds
and then connecting it again.
3. If you have access to a secondary PC or laptop (maybe a friend's, or a local
internet cafe), try connecting your drive to it and see if it works. If it
does, it could indicate a problem with your computer or the USB port.
4. Check whether or not plug and play is disabled in the system BIOS. If it is,
enable plug and play in the BIOS. If you are at least getting a notice at start
up that the system has detected a new device and would you like to install it
now warning pop up window, then you know plug and play is enabled, but if not,
then it is not enabled.
Somtimes some applications or even spware can block plug and play abilities.
But like I said check your BIOS first.
Another easy way is to see if the system is seeing a new device but may not
be warning you, is to go into the My Computer (right click)> System
Properties> Hardware (tab)> Device Manager, and see of you are showing
any yellow question marks. These yellow marks are for unknown attached devices
Windows does not know what it is, and can not install because it has no driver
in it's data base to recognize it.
If the hard drive is plugged in, do a re-start of the computer, navigate to the
above mention Device Manager and see. It should be listed under the category
"disk drives" there is an item with the name "ST350084 1A USB
Device. If it still does not show any new devices. Plug and Play has been
disabled. If not in the System Bio's, then possibly in the Administrator's System
Services File.
5. The problem could also be caused by the Logical Disk
Manager Administrative service and possibly the Logical Disk Manager service
not being started or the services might be disabled. To solve the problem,
click on the "Start" menu, click the "Run" command, and
type in: services.msc , scroll down until you see both these services. Right
click on each of the services about and select properties, on the general tab,
change the startup type to "automatic" and click the start button
under the service status. do this for both of the service
6. There could be a problem with the drive’s enclosure.
Please contact the point of purchase and try to get a different enclosure/case,
if possible.
7. Try changing change the pin on the external HDD from
slave to master.
I also saw this on a different forum:
“OK, I will try to keep this as simple as I can. I common
problem with external hard drives (any hard drive for that matter, just maybe a
tad bit more common with external drives) is they lose there partition
information. The very beginning sector of the hard drive has the MBR on it
which holds your partition table. It is very likely that this might be corrupt
or damage.
If your computer recognizes your drive (ie. if the drive is listed under disk
management and/or in you device manager) but the drive shows nothing but
unallocated space then this is most likely the problem. To access Disk
Management in XP/2000:
Right click on My Computer.
Choose Manage (This will open the Computer Management window).
Go to the Storage category and select Disk Management
In this case DO NOT create a new partition in windows. This will reformat the
drive and make your life very difficult.
You will need a tool that can repair your MBR (not fixmbr from the dos prompt)
this almost never works unless your mbr is still readable in some way.
I use Acronis Disk Director Suite it works great for more than just this and is
a great tool to have on hand. Other ones are Active Partition recovery
(untested by me) and Partition Table Doctor (also untested).
In Acronis open the Recovery Expert tool. Tell it to try to recover a
partition. Select the advanced and manual modes. What his will do is look at
the old MBR and see if it could read anything from there (like the fixmbr
command only acronis allows you to choose the repair) then it scans the entire
drive, it just looks at the type of data in each sector so it works pretty
fast. You will see a list (most I have ever had in 4, you might just get 1) of
possible partitions. Select the one that looks correct (I just look at total
drive space and how much free space it reports would be left to try and
determine) and follow the on screen directions. Once your back in Acronis' main
screen you will now see your drive with a drive letter. We aren't done yet
though the change doesn't actually take effect until you commit it to the drive
(there should be a little race flag icon at the top of the screen) that will
write the MBR and not touch any other portion of the drive and it should just
work. ( I have had a 100% success rate, although it isn't a guarantee). If it
didn't work and you had more than 1 partition choice when doing the recovery
try it again. You should be able to keep doing it as the only thing that get
overwritten is the MBR.
For those of you that have already re-formatted the drive this will most likely
not work. You may be able to do the steps to rebuild the partition as it was
but you will most likely have a blank drive still (that doesn't mean that
acronis didn't rebuild the partition correctly it is just because you have
already formatted the drive) Acronis also has the ability to recover data, it
works like the partition recover so just step through the process. It isn't
nearly as successful though. Sometime you will get everything, sometimes
nothing sometimes you will be able to see the files but they won't open because
the data is corrupt. A general rule is the less you mess with the drive the
better your chances.”
Here are some links to free software recovery tools on the
net:
http://free-backup.info/data-recovery-software.htm
http://www.freebyte.com/filediskutils/#datarecovery
http://techmagazine.ws/free-data-recovery-tools/
Hope that helps...Should you have any further questions,
please feel free to post them here.
P.S. Before you assign a rating, please
make sure that the issue is resolved or you are satisfied. If not, please post
back as to what you did, and/or any other questions you may have, and I will
try to assist you as best I can. Please do not assign an ‘Inappropriate’ or
‘Thanks for trying’ rating if your issue is not resolved after the first
response itself, as sometimes a bit of to and fro dialogue may be necessary
before we can find a fix or an answer to
your query.
If you find that the solution/answer I provided led you
to, or resulted in a fix, please close the ticket with a FixYa! rating.
I would be very grateful for your show of appreciation.
Thank you for using FIXYA!
Cheers!
IrishDruid
Hi ,
Sorry for the delayed response...had to catch up on my beauty sleep ;)
Ok, before we proceed, 2 questions -
1. What did you do differently for the drive to be recognised,
2. What is it showing up as?
3. Has it been assigned a drive letter?
Yes, I agree it couldn't have been the BIOS setting, but better to cover all angles ;)
Ok, two or maybe three things.
1. Find out where the drive is is mapped to. Forget about My Computer..Go to disk Manager
- Right click on My Computer.
Choose Manage (This will open the Computer Management window).Go to the Storage category and select Disk Management.
See what your drive is listed as, usually it will be USB Mass Storagec/ External USB Hard Drive. See if it is listed as any letter. If it is, see where it is mapped to. If it is mapped to any other directory, disconnect the mapped directory and the drive should appear in that letter instantly.
2. Should that not work, try doing a clean boot and install of your driver software. This will eliminate any conflict with other software that may have caused the drive to give the dll error. Click HERE to see a tip I posted just yesterday, on how to do this.
3. If all fails, follow the procedure I outlined in italics
in my first post. You can download Acronis Disk Director Suite from here:
Part
1
Part
2
Please note, you will need WinRar to unzip these files. The Suite is in two parts, and if prompted for a password when installing, use Mybluemoon-planet.com
Once you have completed the download, unzip the software and install. Now follow the instructions as outlined in italics (after no.7 above)
Hopefully, your issue should be resolved.
Cheers!
IrishDruid
Just checking to see if your issue has been resolved…If it has,
please take a moment to close this problem ticket with a FixYa! rating. I would
be very grateful for your gesture of appreciation.
Should you have any further questions, please feel free to
post them here.
Thank you for using FIXYA!
Cheers!
IrishDruid
Right ,
Try this first:
Find out where the drive is is mapped to. Forget about My Computer..Go to disk Manager
- Right click on My Computer.
Choose Manage (This will open the Computer Management window).Go to the Storage category and select Disk Management.
See
what your drive is listed as, usually it will be USB Mass Storagec/
External USB Hard Drive. See if it is listed as any letter. If it is,
see where it is mapped to. If it is mapped to any other directory,
disconnect the mapped directory and the drive should appear in that
letter instantly.
This should not take more than 2 mins. Let me know how it goes.
Try doing a clean boot and install of your driver software. This will
eliminate any conflict with other software that may have caused the
drive to give the dll error. Click HERE to see a tip I posted on how to do this.
If that doesnt work try to get a new casing for the piece. That sometimes helps.
Hi,
Just wanted to inquire if your issue is resolved, or if there is anything else
I can assist you with...
Cheers!
IrishDruid
Here's another tip..
First unplug all other USB devices. Now plug in the Drive and then plug the other devices back one by one.
You can also try to map your drive by going to My Computer, right click, Map network drive. (Once your drive is recognized in Disk manager,of course).Now Click browse and choose your drive. You should have it mapped as a drive letter....
Just checking to see if your issue has been resolved… If
you find that the solution/answer I provided led you to, or resulted in a fix,
please take a moment to close the ticket with a FixYa! rating under my
solution. I would be very grateful for your show of appreciation.
Should you have any further questions, please feel free to
post them here.
Thank you for using FIXYA!
Cheers!
IrishDruid
Make sure you have the latest updates and patches from Microsoft..
Hi,
Just wanted to inquire if your issue is resolved, or if there is anything
further I can do to assist you…
P.S. -You can rate this solution with one of four
votes (remember that at times a bit of to and fro dialogue may be necessary to
resolve an issue).
Thank you for using FIXYA! "FixYa!"
- The solution provides great advice on how to solve the problem."Helpful"
- The solution provides useful leads that helps solve the problem."Thanks
for Trying" - The solution does not solve the problem but the
effort is appreciated."Inappropriate"
- The solution has absolutely nothing to do with the problem.
IrishDruid
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Get the laptop replaced by the company if its under warranty,the data recovery is very expensive, if you need the data very badly please consult any other company the cost may down, or try using this software it may help, to download : http://www.download3000.com/download_46222.html
good luck......
Well i think the hdd is defective,. take the chances..
Thanks
Hi,
I am gonna give you couple of softwares in a few minutes.You can try them all.
Goodluck..
and look for the drive there.320 views
Usually answered in minutes!
I'm not sure what you mean by take the chances. I am wondering if there are any free data retrieval tools out there OR if there is anything I can change in the OS to try to recognize the dang thing. What do you think?
The only other computer is a mac. I did plug it in to see if it would at least recognize it, but it didn't.
The only other laptop is old with WIN95, so that won't do any good they told me.
Thank you for the software. I'll look for it. Do you have any tips on getting my machine to recognize the drive?
It's not the laptop, it's the external drive. Would that software help? Thanks!
Wow, thank you for the thorough post. To save both our time, let me ask you which of the above numbered points apply if I give you some more information.
I had been using the drive just fine, so I know that I have enough power (remember from my original problem I said that I can feel the disk spinning also). Also, I have been to the device manager window and there are no flags/alerts. This problem just started happening. I was downloading some files and it said that there was an error of some type (I didn't capture the error because it went away when I unplugged the drive and rebooted.) It is an external drive, so no jumpers to switch. And again, I was using it just fine. Bottom line, if it's still spinning, is there a way I can talk to it to recover data even when My Computer doesn't show it connected? Thanks again.
something new:
It is now being recognized in the USB conrollers list, but not as a drive. Does that tell you anything?
No worries, I'm grateful for the help. I changed the Logical Disk Manager Administrative and Logical Disk Manager services from manual to automatic. Now the drive is showing up in the device manager as it's own line (Maxtor Personal Storage Security with a subline of Maxtor One Touch) as well as under USB Controllers as USB Mass Storage
Device. I reinstalled the software for it, and the Maxtor Status Icon is Green indicating it is plugged in, but locked.
Now... it is still not showing up with a drive letter in My Computer. Also, when I try to launch the software I get this error message: "The procedure entry point ?SFEFinderHeaderClose@@YAHPAX@Z could not be located in teh dynamic link library SFEConfiguration.dll." I went to the program files and did find that dll, but I don't know what that entry point means. It could have to do with "find the mapped drive" or something.
With regard to some of your other possibilities, there's no way for BIOS to change unless I change them, is there? Like I said, I'd used the drive successfully many times so I don't know why the BIOS would be it. Then again, I'm not a guru or a wiz. :-)
Thanks again for your help. This would be a drag if I lose this data.
By the way, in the device manager, when I open both lines, there is no error in the Device status box. It's says the device is working correctly. I did try the troubleshooter, and unplugged all other devices from USB ports (for a power issue), but no change.
I haven't forgotten you or your efforts, and I am appreciative. I'm still a bit stuck deciding which course of action to take. The tricky part is, it's still showing up in the USB Controllers as a USB Mass Storage device, and as its own line in Device Manager list of devices. Despite this, it's sill not mapped to any drive. I already reinstalled the software, and that's when I started receiving the dll error. So, I'm not really sure of the numerous options above which to try. I'm ready to just blow off the data and get a new one from Maxtor. It's just that it contains many Gb of downloaded data that took me days to accumulate, so it's like throwing away a chunk of time from my life.
What's complicating this is that it doesn't always get recognized by the device manager. sometimes I plug it in and it won't even show up in the USB Controllers list or Device list. If I can get it to at least be recognized there, I should be able to see it Disk Management (I hope). So, I keep unplugging and repluging, and restarting trying to get it to at least be seen.
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