Seagate Maxtor OneTouch 500GB External Hard Drive Problem With Vista
I just wanted to write this short post about an experience with my Maxtor OneTouch 500GB external hard drive which I use for backup purposes. It may help others doing a search for the same problem.
My PC is a Compaq running Vista Home Basic.
I installed the Maxtor drive with no problems and it was working just fine until Vista upgraded to Service Pack 1 automatically online.
I can’t remember the exact errors but when trying to save a text document the error message said the drive was corrupted and the file could not be saved. I also noticed that the file had deleted itself but luckily a backup had been made. (Thank you NoteTab Pro!)
I was able to view the backup but could find no way to save it.
I then resorted to the extent of my PC tech skills using the old favorite of shutting down the machine and switching it back on again. It’s amazing how many problems this cures but I digress.
On booting up obviously Windows was convinced there was a problem with a corrupted drive and automatically ran CHKDISK. This reported a file indexing error and went about deleting erroneous entries during stage 2 of the CHKDISK process.
Stage 3 revealed a problem with what I thought said the Master File Volume or Master something or other. It appeared to fix this then went on to say it couldn’t continue the fix because there was not enough disk space. PC then booted normally.
The problem still remained and I noticed that all text files had been marked as read only.
Unchecking the read only attributed afforded a tempory fix but Vista was still giving corrupted drive information errors and when rebooting ran the CHKDISK program with the same results as above.
Right clicking on the OneTouch icon and selecting Properties | Tools | Check drive for errors would not work in Windows. It said it had to run the diagnostic from startup. I later checked the drive on an XP machine and the diagnostic ran within Windows and showed no errors.
The next step was to disconnect the drive from the Vista machine and reboot. This went normally.
Next the drive was reconnected and now it seems that all the problems have vanished – hopefully.
So if you have the same error with your Maxtor OneTouch external hard drive just disconnect it, reboot, connect and reboot and hopefully that is your problem solved.
I don’t believe there was ever any error with the OneTouch drive because it ran just fine on my XP machine.
Ade
Hi,
I have a OneTouch 750. I use the drive for backup purposes. Twice now it has told me a directory has been corrupted. The solution that has always brought the data back as been to reboot the drive. Having done this, I am quite unable to find any problem with the disk contents. I don’t know what triggers the drive to go inaccessible and I don’t much like it, but my system software has not changed (XP with auto-updates turned off).
I went looking for similar issues and found this.
Thanks,
John
My drive warranty has expired on my maxtor and lone behold 3 days later it apeared to have an electrical problem. Does anyone know where can I get it repaired at reasonable cost?
Ouch. Three failures does not necessarily mean the product is faulty, but it makes you think! I bought a Western Digital “stand alone” drive and thus far, no issues. But I’ve bought loads of Maxtors (internals) over the years and they all worked great. I wonder if there was a bad batch or has Maxtor’s quality fallen that far?
I also have a 6 month old Maxtor One Touch 750 that I Unfortunately put all my back up on, 6 months of work, now it is ALL gone. I am very unhappy. This drive went incognito once before, I booted and it came back, but now it’s gone for good. What a piece of junk this Maxtor is…….
Ive used Maxtor internal and external drives for a few years – no problems as yet, relliable drives.
Using such a hdd will definitely save my data in safety
I’ve had a Maxtor One Touch 4 500GB drive for about two years or so. I leave the DELL Optiplex 755 it is attached to running continuously. The operating system is Vista Business.
The One Touch will run without problems for about two weeks, then fail backup. Running Chkdsk /r always detects and fixes multiple index errors on the drive. This routine has been the case since I bought the drive.
I have to conclude that there is something about the Maxtor software that is buggy and that this drive may not be reliable as a backup device (due to buggy software or drive electronics probably).
Have the above errors been rectified? I run a plant training company and use this hard drive to back up my client data, dont want it failing on me?
@CPCS
The hard drive seems to be a solid build but I guess like any machine they can fail without notice. My Maxtor has performed well for a long time but I do often think “should I get another…?”. Problem is, how many backups of backups of backups do we need? Perhaps we should get a data bank of 12 x 1Tb drives each backing up independently every 10 minutes LOL!
On a serious note, at the first hint of a backup drive not reading a file or folder then get a new one immediately. Quite often drives start to fail progressively rather than a sudden shutdown.
Ade
Thanks for your reply, some good points highlighted, have taken note.
Thanks
I have a Maxtor Onetouch 500GB external hard drive. I run Windows XP. When I plug the Maxton in my computer no longer recognizes it being connected, thus I can not access the stored info. On the drive. Any ideas? I would hate to lose all that data.