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HELP Maxtor 5000LE 1

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jsour6772

Technical User
Jun 9, 2005
3
US
I have a Maxtor 5000 LE external HD and it will not work. The system recognizes it but every time i try to go into the drive it says do you want to format. I have formated it many many times but after its all done and said and i try to go in the drive it just prompts me to format again. Any help at all would be well appriciated because it is a 80 gig drive that is worthless to me at this time. THANKS.
 
Few things you didnt point out:
Is this drive usb2.0 or firewire?
What os you are running?

Also, have you been using the icon in the system tray, the one with the little green arrow, to turn it off before you turn off the computer?

In the end, if you still have problems, then perhaps you can go to maxtors website and download the diagnostic program and run it to see if there are any problems with the drive. Its a free prog and you might have received it with the drive and it may be on a cd instead of a floppy.

If you run the diagnostic programs and all is well but the drive still wont stay formatted, then use the same diagnostic program to write zeroes to the hard drive and then reformat. This method has helped me in the past.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
Is the drive listed as USB 1.1, or USB 2.0? Are you using the USB cable that came with the drive? Have you upgraded XP to SP1 or SP2?
 
I have installed windows sp1 and sp2. I am using the usb cable that came with the drive.
 
First, i would try another usb cable, perhaps the one you have is faulty even though the drive can be seen.

I dont know if these cases open up, but if they do then perhaps you could take the drive out and either connect it in your system as master on the primary and go with a boot disk, or install it as slave in your win xp system.
If it were me, i would try the first scenario, but either way, if you can get the bios to see the drive then you could try and format it that way instead of thru the usb cable.
Another possibility is to go to the maxtor website and check out their FAQ section and look for other information that may help you out, their troubleshooting and other sections. You might find something there that can help you out or help us help you out.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
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