Maxtor External Hard Dirve Not Working

[nowstime]

Hi~

I was backing up my data to an external hard drive (using Maxtor One Touch Backup), then suddenly I got an error message when the laptop had a problem with the system.

After then my laptop can't recognize the external USB hard drive. Once a go "My Computer" from the window explorer, it freezes and I get the "Not Responding" message and I must "End Task"

Somebody told me to go to the "Control Pannel" and use "Device Manager" to solve the problem but I don't think this will help me recognize the external drive.

I used my wife's computer but having the same problem, so I guess the external drive is messed up...

How can I make the external drive work? I have so much valuable stuff in it...

Plz let me know...

Best wishes,

Austin, TX

[BillMorrow]

you need to figure out whether the problem lies with the hard drive itself or the external USB box and associated electronics..
first thing is check for loose cables..
maybe a bad USB cable..
next the box itself.. how.>? pull the drive and see if you can see it on a desktop computer..
you'll want to do this anyway to see if you can recover your backed up data..

FWIW, in the "olden days" of ancient computer times, when dr dobbs was a four sheet pamphlet and palo alto tiny basic was the language de jure we followed a grandfather, father & son backup procedure..
which means you always have a spare backup even if the main drive and two of the three backups ALL fail at the same time..

for me, here, i use a raid-1 on 2 desktops..
in fact the older of these has a failed drive and i must put a replacement in and rebuild it..
and
multiple 60gig, 80gig & 100gig laptop drives wherein i retain a clone of the working drive..

[GomJabbar]

Not to burst your bubble, but I had (3) Maxtor 80Gb SATA drives that all failed in less than a year in a desktop PC. No more Maxtor's for me.

I had the first (2) drives in a raid 0 array. First one drive failed at about 10 months, then the second about a month later. This was in a new PC, so warranty covered the replacements. I tried to get non-Maxtor drives for the replacements, but the PC builder would not allow it. I put the second (2) drives in a raid 1 array, and in less than a year one of them failed. Since I was out of warranty, I went and bought (2) Samsung 150 Gb SATA drives, and put them in a raid 1 array. They have been running fine for nearly a year - so far, so good.

EDIT: BTW, the 4th Maxtor drive has just been sitting idle. I guess it still works, but I haven't been using it.