My machine:
OS: Vista Ultimate.
Hardware: Intel E6700 Core Duo Desktop (from Cooltech/EndPCnoise.com),
4gb Corsair Memory,
Nvidia 7950GT 512Mb video card.
External drives are EzQuest 500GB USB drives
(which use Maxtor-sourced disks).
Interesting fact: I have 2 older 160gb Ezquest USB drives
that work perfectly in Vista; they just plug+play,
old data and all.
In Device manager Vista sees each of the 2 identical drives as "Maxtor 6h500R0 USB Device" and says under Device Status
"Working Properly."
But it will no show up with a drive letter.
I tried to format it in Disk Management and it has an Icon with a red plus sign and says it is "unknown" and "unreadable" and the only options I get when I click on the icon are "Properties" and "Help".
There are lots of properties that look reasonable.
I tried to update the drivers but Vista says the correct drivers are the ones already in Vista.
Again, these drives work fine in XP. I reformatted them in XP, but
Vista still won't let me format them or use them, even though it still says they are "working properly" in Device Manager status.
I think this is really bad when upgrading to Vista causes a failure with XP-compatible hardware. I thought Vista was upward-compatible with XP. I guess that was pretty nieve... I think this kind of thing should be considered a major bug in Vista and Microsoft should be ashamed of itself releasing Vista with these deficiencies.
Please help. These drives cost me almost $800 and now they are just paperweights.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic