External Hard Drive Problem

neodjandreneodjandre
edited February 2007 in Hardware
Hello, I've got a Maxtor 120GB, 8MB and an external firewire enclosure which I use to connect the hard drive to my laptop. The hard drive worked just fine yesterday but now I can't even access it. I don't know why is that. I can see the LED showing some activity but then when I double click the letter for this drive in "My computer", I get errors like "the parameter is not correct" and "the hard drive is corrupted". I don't think that I did anything wrong.. this is very strange.. Please help cause I can't lose all my data just like that.

Comments

  • rykoryko new york
    edited February 2004
    I have an 80gb maxtor ext. firewire and the same thing happened to me one day out of the blue. There is a disk check utility on maxtor's website that you can download which will check the status of your drive. Unfortunately, i lost all of my data and i think you might too. Did you reformat the very first time you used the drive? Or did you just plug it in and go out of the box? If you started using it out of the box, there is a good chance that the crappy included FAT file system got corrupted and you are fubar'ed. Anyway, you could always try some sort of data-recovery application or company(lot's of $$$), but i wouldn't hold your breath. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you are probably screwed. Your best bet is to reformat with NTFS file system and move foward from there. Do you have any backups? If it makes you feel any better, most of us here have had a drive fail at one time or another, so you are not alone. By the way, since i formated my ext. firewire to NTFS over a year ago, i haven't had any problems.
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    actually I bought the firewire enclosure and the hard drive seperately. I think I'm not able to check the status of my drive because the PowerMax utility from Maxtor works during boot up and the firewire link is not recognised at that time. I formatted the drive to NTFS (I believe) since i'm using winXP home. I used the MaxBlast utility to format my drive.
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    I tried to open the enclosure to see if there is a hardware related problem. In the process I hurt my finger which is displayed in the attached picture :D Basically you need to connect the two cables to the hard drive. I don't think I could do that the wrong way :D
    btw, can you see anything noteworthy related to the jumper settings ?
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    http://www.maxtor.com/en/documentation/jumper_settings/style_a2.htm

    my jumper settings seem to be at (cable select), is that OK ?
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Who made the firewire enclosure, do you know??? And do you know what model it is??? Some enclosures even for IDE cold-swap want HDs jumpered a certain way for best results, and somewhere on mfr site or in tech support that info will be available. Let's see if can figure out who made it, and if I or others have contact info, can provide that or look for similar issues with same device and see if there were common jumpering fixes. Knowing the Maxtor model number might help also.

    One thing, please do not use a removable or external firewire device to boot from, this is very risky. Use a removable or external to store data on but not to boot from. To have firewire up and access storage devices through it, you usually need Windows or an O\S that can access firewire to be up first. Or you get junk on HD and not good file system structure. With special programs helping the booting has been done, but they(the helping programs or special O\S modules that run at DOS level) need to be specific to the external device holding the drive also for this to work right.

    ADDED, beacause of what the thread starter said and did not say:

    If HD has valid data and firewire cannot get to it or firewire support is not present and the HD therefore cannot be found and accessed, the easiest fix is to mount drive as slave in computer and copy data over to the boot drive(with boot drive set to master with jumper) with an imaging program. Simply changing how HD is findable might help get data off it, a LOT. Hooking HD up to motherboard directly as an IDE drive or as what it is without the external adapter and cable to it can help accomplish that.

    John D.
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    I bought the enclosure from ebay. On the original box it says ME-720 Series, there doesn't seem to be anything else about the maker on the box. I googled it and found it though :

    http://www.acortech.com/.sc/ms/cat/1032987946/9/nc/External%20Enclosure

    It's near the end (mine only has a firewire connection though) :

    BYTEC 3.5" EXTERNAL FIREWIRE+USB2.0 COMBO ENCLOSURE ME720U2F
    3.5" EXTERNAL FIREWIRE + USB2.0 COMBO ENCLOSURE ME720U2F
    Our Price $59

    My Maxtor model is: DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB ATA/133 HDD, 6Y120PO

    My friend has exactly the same configuration as I do and he doesn't have any problems. strange..
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    thanx for the info on recovering the data.. I thought about that as well but i don't have a desktop computer :D and I don't know anyone who is willing to let me open his computer and install the hard drive etc etc...
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    more info about the enclosure here: http://s73969325.oneandoneshop.co.uk/sess/utn154026a41102b64/shopdata/index.shopscript

    I bought it from that guy :D
  • rykoryko new york
    edited February 2004
    You could always try setting the hdd to MASTER instead of CABLE SELECT, and see if that makes any difference.
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    ok then, any more tips before I assemble the hard drive ?.. it's very hard for me to take the hard drive out of the enclosure.. in any case, I won't lose any data if I change the jumper settings to Master , right ?
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited February 2004
    none whatsoever. You don't have to assemble the whole enclosure, you know. Since you're debugging it at the moment anyhow, just plug the power and data cables into the drive and leave the enclosure disassembled for the time being.
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    hehe, I'm afraid of electrocution but if you tell me that I won't die I might as well do what u r saying ..
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited February 2004
    If it has an external power supply, there is zero chance of you electrocuting yourself. If the power supply is in the enclosure, like the one in my firewire enclosure is, just don't go sticking your hand in the power supply itself while the enclosure is plugged in, and you'll be fine.
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    thanx, power supply is external ! I'm gonna try this tomorrow.. now I'm getting wasted cause I want to forget this problem mainly..
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    Miracle !!!

    I restarted my system while having the enclosure powered on and ScanDISK was automatically launched to check for any errors on the hard drive F. At that poing I got an "unknown error occured" and I was redirected to windows welcoming screen. Then I chosen to have scandisk scan for the drive again and I restarted my system. At this point scandisk reported some fixes of bad clusters and now I'm able to access my data. And the good thing is that nothing was lost I believe. Does anybody know where I can find the log file of the fixes that scandisk did ??
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    Well, I really don't have an answer for your question (??puzzled??)
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited February 2004
    Ooops. That's the first time I've ever done thhat. I posted that in the wrong thread. Sorry... too many windows open at once. :banghead:
  • neodjandreneodjandre
    edited February 2004
    that's what I thought as well :)
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Geeky1 wrote:
    Ooops. That's the first time I've ever done thhat. I posted that in the wrong thread. Sorry... too many windows open at once. :banghead:

    Don't feel bad. I do that all the time! :aol:
  • kmanvakmanva
    edited September 2006
    HI! This might be a long shot considering your post was years ago but I am having a similar problem and was wondering if you can help. Did you open up the drive and do the jumper thing? Where do you get ScanDisk? You said it automatically launched? Pay it forward and please help : ) I DON"T want to lose my data : (
    neodjandre wrote:
    Miracle !!!

    I restarted my system while having the enclosure powered on and ScanDISK was automatically launched to check for any errors on the hard drive F. At that poing I got an "unknown error occured" and I was redirected to windows welcoming screen. Then I chosen to have scandisk scan for the drive again and I restarted my system. At this point scandisk reported some fixes of bad clusters and now I'm able to access my data. And the good thing is that nothing was lost I believe. Does anybody know where I can find the log file of the fixes that scandisk did ??
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Scandisk is integral to Windows. Assuming you can see your drive in Windows Explorer or My Computer, right click on its icon, select Properties, select Tools, and then select Check Now for "This option will check the volume for errors" (top of the window). When click "Check Now", another box will pop up. Put a check select both options boxes and click on Start.
  • duke76duke76
    edited February 2007
    I have a SimpleTech Simple Drive and it was working perfectly a few days ago. However, while I was moving it, I accidentally damaged the 12V adapter. I tried several other adapters, a 9V and a 17V and the hard drive did not work. I then bought a new Simpletech 12V adapter like the one I had before. The drive turns on fine, but the computer does not recognize it anymore. There is no longer a drive icon in the My Computer menu. I have a feeling I damaged the drive by using those other adapters. Does anyone know how I might correct this?
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