maxtor external hard drive stopped working

rolemac · 02 Dec 2010

I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium on a laptop with a Maxtor 320 GB external hard drive that I use for a back up, everything worked fine 2 days ago, this morning when I plug in the external hard drive my computer is telling me that the drive needs to be formatted before I can use it, when I try to open the drive in My Computer it tells me the "file or directory is corrupted or unreadable" I used Restore and that didn't fix anything, I'm a beginner and I'm lost trying to fix this problem, any ideas or suggestions will be appreciated - thanks

Robert

linnemeyerhere · 02 Dec 2010

rolemac, Welcome to SF. Please right click on drive and select properties and then tools select error - checking and tell us what it finds.

rolemac · 02 Dec 2010

thanks for the quick reply - it says "windows cannot check the disk, the disk cannot be accessed"

linnemeyerhere · 02 Dec 2010

I'm worried for you and your drive. Let's see if others have something to try but it sounds or doesn't sound good. Likely the drive died. I would call Maxtor and speak with them about things you can try to diagnose the issue!

rolemac · 02 Dec 2010

thanks again, I'd hate to lose what's on there, it'd be nice if I could find a solution

linnemeyerhere · 02 Dec 2010

Man I totally understand and having it professionally retrieved is big bucks. Wait and see if others hit this post and offer a suggestion ! I'll check in from time to time. Cheers

whs · 02 Dec 2010

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Zepher · 02 Dec 2010

rolemac said:

thanks again, I'd hate to lose what's on there, it'd be nice if I could find a solution

You won't lose your stuff if that is your backup drive and you used it properly.
A backup is a copy of what you have stored somewhere else. If you have stuff that is stored solely on the Maxtor External, then it isn't a proper backup. That would mean you are using it as a storage drive and not as a backup drive.

I have 14 drives attached to my machine, 1 of them is the OS drive, and 11 of them are storage drives and 2 are backup drives.