Hi all,

I'm having problems with my portable HDD. It's a Maxtor (oh no) Basics 500GB. Since a few hours, it doesn't show up in explorer anymore. The illustration says it all, I think. Could someone please help me?

:bump:

You may need to go into Computer Management to reactivate the drive.

Rightclick on your My computer icon, click manage and go to storage.

If the drive is listed there you should be able to reinitalize it, or windows may decide to be a d#ck and make you format it before you can use it again.

If it doesn't show up there, something is wrong and I would suggest calling Maxtor customer service.

Maxtors are good drives, don't let anyone tell you otherwhise.
Alot of people just don't seem to know how to take good care of thier computer.

I also had this problem a few times with some PCs.
Can be everything, low power, defective USB port or drive, loose contact of the plug / connector ...

Have you tried to just plug it into another USB port?

Quote from DragonCommando :

You may need to go into Computer Management to reactivate the drive.

Rightclick on your My computer icon, click manage and go to storage.

If the drive is listed there you should be able to reinitalize it, or windows may decide to be a d#ck and make you format it before you can use it again.

If it doesn't show up there, something is wrong and I would suggest calling Maxtor customer service.

Maxtors are good drives, don't let anyone tell you otherwhise.
Alot of people just don't seem to know how to take good care of thier computer.

I just noticed that my drive isn't broken. It works perfectly in Windows 7. I'll try your suggestion as soon as I boot back into XP.

Quote from BBO@BSR :

I also had this problem a few times with some PCs.
Can be everything, low power, defective USB port or drive, loose contact of the plug / connector ...

Have you tried to just plug it into another USB port?

Yes I have tried to do so, without result.

If I see it right you use quite a few portable devices, can XP may only recognice a certain number of them? And IIRC objects in grey show that these are ready to detach, maybe its really down to low power.

Quote from ACCAkut :

If I see it right you use quite a few portable devices, can XP may only recognice a certain number of them? And IIRC objects in grey show that these are ready to detach, maybe its really down to low power.

Looks like he is using an USB card reader so these are not "real" external drives.

Just for the info ;-)
About the drives:
Windows can use as much drives as the alphabet has (minus A and B as these letters are reserved for Floppy Disks) so 24 devices/disks/CD/DVD can be used in total.
And you can attach up to 127 USB devices. (But usually you run out of power)

btw. I once had a SATAII drive and from time to time it lost connection without any warning, after a reboot is was there again. A few days later it suddenly dissappeared again etc. etc.. Half a year later the drive was completly dead.

So my best guess is also low power or a drive that starts to die sooner or later but I hope it's something different.

Quote from ACCAkut :

If I see it right you use quite a few portable devices, can XP may only recognice a certain number of them? And IIRC objects in grey show that these are ready to detach, maybe its really down to low power.

As you can see in the left window, I have a USB card reader

I tried the following: I deleted the drivers in computer management, rebooted, reconnected the HDD, and waited for the "Device found" pop-up. It did actually pop up, and install the drivers. However, when I looked in explorer I didn't see it. I'm clueless. It does work in Windows 7.

Maybe there is a problem with the drive letters/registry.

Can you assign another drive letter to this drive in the Disk Management (dunno if this is the right term /Datenträgerverwaltung in german)?

Use [WindowsButton]+[R] then start " compmgmt.msc "
then choose another drive letter for the HDD

Or check if the drive letter is activated or not
iirc you can use TweakUI to check of the drive letters are activated or not etc.

It shows up with the wrong size, in disk management (Schijfbeheer in Dutch). Even though it only has one 500GB partition, disk management says it has 3 partitions with a total size of about 1200GB. I don't want to format it, because the drive works well on my other OS and on my brother's computer. It also has valuable files on it.

Is it FAT32 or NTFS?

Verwisselbare! *Schijf Schijf*

Quote from Shadowww :

Is it FAT32 or NTFS?

NTFS

Quote from doyal :

Verwisselbare! *Schijf Schijf*

Interchangeable! *Disk Disk*

Quote from hrtburnout :

interchangeable! *disk disk*

haha! :d

Quote from doyal :

haha! :d

Take another one of these, mate