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General discussion

hard drive inaccessible after data transfer error

Mar 6, 2007 3:03AM PST

AMD Athlon XP 3000+
Gigabyte motherboard
Windows XP SP2
ATI Radeon

I have an old Maxtor DiamondMax 8 40GB hard drive that I was playing around with, and basically turned it into an external hard drive using Vantec's USB to IDE kit. It was working perfectly, then as I was transferring about 100 MB of data, I got an error, then the drive would no longer be recognized correctly by Windows. Sometimes it installs it as a Maxtor drive in Device Manager, but I have no drive letter. I have plugged another hard drive into the USB to IDE kit, and it is recognized correctly. Any idea why the first drive seems to be inaccessible after the data transfer error?

Discussion is locked

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The key word is old. . .
Mar 6, 2007 7:10AM PST

Sounds like it died. Drives giving errors will die.

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Re: The key word is old...
Mar 6, 2007 7:27AM PST

When I said it was old, I meant it was about 2 years old, and has been in an anti-static bag. I had a zip drive that would do the same thing when trying to transfer a large amount of data. It would freeze and the drive wouldn't even spit out the disk. After formatting, the disk would be ok again. This has the exact same feel. Whenever I plug the drive into the USB port, it recognizes it, but it doesn't get assigned a driver letter.

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Since you tried. . .
Mar 6, 2007 11:10AM PST

another drive on that PC, can you try the drive in question on another PC? If you get the same indication, it sounds terminal. Drives do die.