Anyone else using a Maxtor external hard drive? Mine started playing up on Friday and now I can't access any data off it.
Tried backing it up to another hard drive, but an error came up stating "IO error".
I'm scared shitless of loosing all the data on it.

You mean you never backed-up?

Oh dear... I got the same message on an old Maxtor Drive... it's looking at me now from the confines of my workstation. It's never worked since...(OS won't recognise it!) I was considering having it stripped down and sorted, but at £180 then £!!!!/hour for TRYING to get it to be recognised... I never bothered. Also the work is not guaranteed to reclaim all data. I may open it up myself (nothing to loose!) and have a look. Though I do know it's not to be recommended...

the most common cause of thoses errors are the interface. ie the cable from the drive to the connecting board in the casing. if you open the casing you will find it is a standard HD and could be temporarily fitted internaly to allow backup of data. you should find the data is good. if the drive is faulty there are a number of ways of getting the data off, many very expesive. but the first thing to try is attach it to your PC as a slave to a working drive


Fixed some spelling and grandma problems

[Edited on 6/12/04 by simonH]

If it does you are in with a shot, if it doesn't you are in the sh*t. As said, hook it up as a slave to a drive you know is o.k. What size drive is it, what system is it running, fat16,32 or NTFS? Try the manufacturers website for any stuff that they do.
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.8db0c3d6932ced37294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html
Free recovery software is available but if the drive isn't recognised in bios you may be in for a hard time.

Thanks for the replies chaps. Iwas just about to do my Friday back-up when it went pear shaped. It's a 120 Gig and does spin up and is running on Win2k, FAT32.
I'll have a play with it and see what transpires.
Thanks again.

Good luck - let us know how you have gone on please.... it may help

HDs are the single PC part that is most likely to get zapped by static. I have never seen a memory module or processor zapped but five HDs -- two by me three by others.
I use extenal HDs but only for data transfer -- for backup I just don't trust them enough .

[Edited on 15/12/04 by britishtrident]

[Edited on 15/12/04 by britishtrident]

Holy crap! That could well explain it. I had the damned thing sitting on the raised shelf along side the monitor.
An update: I found if zI disconnected the HDD I could boot the puter, and once it was running, I could re-connect the HDD and accesas it. I could copy files and folders in small packets, but it couldn't cope with folders within folders for some reason.
Anyway, all's well that ends well. I spent some hours at it and now have everything backed up to a new external drive and DVD too.
I'll move the new HDD away from the monitor now.