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Maxtor One Touch III Mini - How Can I Format This???

11337 Views 10 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  Deleted090308, 
T
Hi,
Had this healthty unformatted external hard drive for 2 weeks and everything about the drive was ok until I accidentally installed its included installers/programs.

How can I format a drive when it is:
1. Not detected anymore by vista, xp nor mac.
2. Whenever I connect it to a USB slot, the cursor changes to a circular object and rotates continously.
3. In SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE it says that it is a storage device in (F). So in command prompt (running as administrator) I typed < format f: > and nothing happened ..after waiting for 2 hours.
4. When I access Disk Management, again the cursor rotates continously and the drive can be seen from there as Disk 0 and no health status whatsover. Nothing happens when I right click any drive from Disk Management.
5. Tried also installing all applicable softwares (Vista, XP and Mac) from Seagate for the drive to be recognized but when I run the program, the cursor again starts rotating continously without any detected drive.
6. Tried to use another cable. Connected it two USB slots, same things happen. The light from the drive would blink for a few minutes, then remain lit and then blink again.

Seems like I should end a process that is keeping my drive busy before formatting it but I have no idea what process to end. Or are there any softwares that can bring my external hard drive to life again???:4-dontkno

Thanks in advance.
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R
You said Mac.

Did you format it in Mac at some point?

If you did, you're never going to get Windows to format it until you clear out the boot sector.

You can use KillDisk (freeware) to write a single pass of 0's to the drive, and then Windows will format it.
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T
Thanks Rob for giving me hope:sigh: to revive a dead drive. Could you please provide me a link where I can find killdisk.
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T
Hi Rob, Mac nor Windows was able to format it. Were you refering to [email protected]? Well I think you might be right, I'll try this at once. Thanks again.:wink:
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R
tora_tora said:
Thanks Rob for giving me hope:sigh: to revive a dead drive. Could you please provide me a link where I can find killdisk.
Click to expand...

You can find it on any freeware download site like download.com, or the original website, killdisk.com
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T
Hi,
After using [email protected] the external drive can now be seen in computer as drive G::laugh:. However when I try to open it a message appears saying "you need to format the disk in drive before you can use it". So in that message I pressed "format disk". Received this message after finishing the format, "format was unsuccessful". Opened Disk Management and the drive is shown as RAW and Healthy. I tried formatting it from CMD and I was able to finish the format successfully but when I try to open the drive in computer it says again that I need to format it again. What should I do now? Thanks Rob for making my drive healthy again. Maybe you can help me make it more healthier:wink:
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R
If you have your windows cd, try running checkdisk on it.

Bootup with the cd like you were going to install windows, press R for recovery console.
Then select the drive from the list, and type in the admin password if there is one.
At the recovery console, type chkdsk /r and hit enter.

Note, there is a space between the chkdsk and the /r part.
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T
Hi,
I don't have a boot up cd for Vista, only a recovery cd so I just tried to checkdisk by right clicking the drive's properties in computer. Unsuccessful, doesn't support RAW. Maybe I have to give up and just dispose of this drive? Nothing seems to get this drive to function.Thanks Rob for your advices. If there are still some way, just let me know.
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D
See if you can format it with Parted Magic.
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T
Hi,
1. Killdisk was able to make the external drive recognized. Thanks Rob:wave:
2. Parted Magic was able to format the external drive to NTFS. Thanks Eneles.:wave:

However after achieving both solutions I am back to my first post.:upset:
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D
What kind of computers are you using? Laptops or desktops?
The "One Touch III Mini" doesn't have a separate power source - it may not get enough power from the USB ports (especially with laptops).
See if another USB cable helps.

Is the drive under warranty?
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