External USB HDD doesn't appear in Windows Explorer
Hallo,
1 week ago I got an external USB Harddisk (MaxtorOne Touch III: 7200RPM 500GB) and I pluged it into USB port. Windows gave automatically drive letter G: . All was fine, and I could save my data on it.
And today I restarted my PC and found that I could not find my drive in Windows explorer. There was no G: in windows explorer.
I opened Computer Management -> Disk Management, I could find there is a 500 GB Hard drive , healthy. But still I could not access it through windows explorer.
I also found in "Disk Management" that my maxtor drive was not assigned with drive letter (so now there is no G: ).
I thought that 500GB is too big for Windows, so I decided to make 4 primary partition.
I made the 1st 100GB partition and formatted it. Great, I could find in windows explorer 100GB drive (G: ) and I could access it.
Before I made the 2nd partition, I restarted my PC, and found that the 1st partition was not recognized (unknown partition; No G: again).
But Device Manager showed the disk drive and USB mass storage. (I attached 2 snapshots to this problem).
I tried to use all USB ports and tried another USB cable, but I got the same results. I even went to a friend, and tried to connect to his PC, I got the same result.
I returned to maxtor, and got a new HDD. I plugged into USB port, and I saw G: 500GB in windows explorer. Great... Then I restarted windows to see if that G: still there. And surprisingly that G: is gone. I haven't done anything to it. :( Just restart the windows, and my drive disappear from windows explorer.
I am using Laptop with windows XP SP2 (with latest update) and USB 2.0.
Can someone help me with this problem. Any help will be appreciated. :)
If Maxtor gave you a driver disk with the Hard Drive, you might want to try installing their, brand-specific drivers before connecting the drive.
They may have something hard-coded (to support button functionality for example) in the box that's confusing Window's default USB Mass Storage drivers.
