MAXTOR ONE TOUCH 4 MINI

I had the same problem and the Maxtor/Seagate website did not have any solutions. I finally got in touch with Tech Support and got a fix. I was using it with a Dell tower and plugging into a USB port in the front. I also was using an after market cable.

I learned the Maxtor is a power hog and beeps and shuts down when it is not getting enough power. I did not know but the USB ports on the front of a desktop/tower computer do not provide as much power as a port on the back (the back ports are sometimes directly connected to the motherboard). I got a USB extension cable and connected it to a USB port in the back and it solved the problem.

I also learned that most laptop USB ports are not powerful enough to run the Maxtor. Mine would also not work if you attempt to share it by using an unpowered USB hub. I have gotten it to work with a powered desktop USB hub (Belkin).

I believe that this may explain why you get a "Y" cable with the drive. I could not find an explaination for the cable or how to use. There may be an accessory to purchase that attached to the cable and powers it.

Sounds like you do not have the drivers for Vista. Try downloading the latest software for the Mini from the site below. Unistall the old software from your machine, reboot and install the new. It should work now. I once had a similar problem and also had to reformat the Mini also.


http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=ot4-downloads&vgnextoid=0ed72c9e46914110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

When you were in device manager did you notice if it was enabled? Did you try to force install the hardware somewhere else, or did you try to change what driver was used?

Ryan Frame
Creative Energy Associates Technical Center

Hi Lois,
If your Maxtor appears in Disk Utility but the disk volume is not displayed, it's possible that the partition on the disk has been deleted for some reason. If that's the case, you will have to use a disk partitioning utility to create a new partition and then format the hard drive.
Best wishes,
Graemevm

To isolate the problem, please try the steps below:

1. Make sure that the USB ports of your PC are working.
2. Try to connect the device into different USB ports.
3. Try to connect it into different Windows based computer.

Question: Did you reformat this device using your Mac? If yes, there could be a possibility that the device was reformatted using the Mac OSX (Journaled). This type of format would only recognized by Mac computers.

But if it's formatted using the DOS based system, it would work on both Mac and PC.

Dear,
Please check it on the different computer with the same USB cord.

Regards,
Rakesh Kumar

Usualy this thing happens with my WD Elements drive when the cable is not connected properly or some dust went on the connector, try using a paintbrush and get rid of the dust, sometimes the usb cable's end is corrodated and that's why id doesn't work properly anymore, sometimes it connects and a bit later suddenly it dissapears, this case try another cable. And also a good idea to try out the drive on a different USB port.
If none of these works, try it on a different computer and see what happens there, if it's not working over there with any of these tricks than it's time to bring it back to the shop and use your warranty to get a new one.

Try to remove the drive and connect it directly to another computer.
If still doesn't spin up then most likely the board has failed.

I have a Onetouch Mini 4, operating fine on two computers with Windows XP but couldn't get it working on Windows 7. I plugged it in and it would be recognized but a message would come up saying there were errors and to scan. Tried scanning and not scanning and couldn't get the drive to work. If I tried to open it would give me the "access denied". I couldn't get to a security tab from a folder as none of them were working.
It ended up that I wasn't listed as an owner nor had any permissions so I needed to be added to the device.

Here is what I did -

System, device manager, disk drives, right click on onetouch, properties, volumes, populate, the select on touch volume, properties, security, advanced, change permissions, add, typed in my user name - hit checked names (it fixed the format), then hit ok.



Then make sure you set the permissions for all the users.

Are you connecting Drive via a USB hub or direct into two separate USB sockets on PC?