Maxtor external drive stopped working

[FranticLee]

My external One Touch III 750 Gig drive has stopped working.
Model EDA: TA750H0588151
Running XP Home 5.1 with SP 3

I started by searching through the forums and reading everything that looked related, but couldn't find a solution.

I read the following threads:
Seagate External Hard drive not detected
Hard drive invisible and impossible to format
External Hard Drive not Showing Up
External hard drive wont initiate in vista
Problem with a Maxtor one touch III
Maxtor External drive and vista (there was a section on taking apart the drive, which I'll only try if nothing else works)

and plenty of others.

The external drive has worked fine for at least a year. I don't know when it failed; I noticed when I needed to access the files. When I plug it into the PC, I get the two-toned "I see you have a new device" sound, but it doesn't show up in My Computer. When I unplug the device, I get the "I see you are removing a device" sound.

If I look in Device Manager, one of the USB Mass Storage Devices has a yellow warning with the following message: This device cannot start. (Code 10). I ran the Troubleshooting with no luck. I then deleted the driver and restarted the machine. Again, I get the two-tones, but nothing shows up.

Other details
- It powers up and the white button light goes on.
- It has its own separate power cord.
- I can feel the drive spinning.
- I plugged it into another USB plug not on a hub, then tried another USB plug on the back of the machine.
- Switched out cables
- I tried to plug the drive into a laptop, but the laptop doesn't see it either.
- It does not show up under disks in Desktop Management
- I did the shut down, restart, etc. several times.
- I used Add New Hardware several times; had the same problem.
- Tried turning on the drive, then computer and vice versa.
- Unloaded all of my other USB devices and just used the problem drive.

If I can get the drive up long enough to get info off it, I will be delighted! Unfortunately, that drive wasn't backed up when I thought it was.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

I also ran a Maxtor USB device viewer. Port 4 under USB Mass Storage Device has a warning icon. The details are below:

---===>Device Information<===---
*!*ERROR: no String Descriptor for index 2!

ConnectionStatus:
Current Config Value: 0x00 -> Device Bus Speed: Low
Device Address: 0x00
Open Pipes: 0
*!*ERROR: No open pipes!

===>Device Descriptor<===
bLength: 0x12
bDescriptorType: 0x01
bcdUSB: 0x0200
bDeviceClass: 0x00 -> This is an Interface Class Defined Device
bDeviceSubClass: 0x00
bDeviceProtocol: 0x00
bMaxPacketSize0: 0x40 = (64) Bytes
*!*ERROR: Low Speed Devices require bMaxPacketSize0 = 8
idVendor: 0x0D49 = Maxtor
idProduct: 0x7212
bcdDevice: 0x0000
iManufacturer: 0x01
*!*ERROR: no String Descriptor for index 1!
iProduct: 0x02
*!*ERROR: no String Descriptor for index 2!
iSerialNumber: 0x03
*!*ERROR: no String Descriptor for index 3!
bNumConfigurations: 0x01

[JAMES_911]

Unfortunately it does not look good. As explained here: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.js...00dd04090aRCRD (step 6)try using it with a different usb cable, and if that does not work, you will have to start a replacement order.

[FranticLee]

Unfortunately, I already tried swapping out the cables. I also ran through all the options I could in the troubleshooting link you included.

Thanks for the help.

[FranticLee]

I ended up taking apart the case and putting the drive in an external drive case. I couldn't read the drive on my desktop (don't know why), but could access it on my laptop. I copied off the files and dumped the drive in the trash.

At least I got the data back!