External Maxtor Hard Drive not recognized

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Level 1

5 points

External Maxtor Hard Drive not recognized

Help. I installed 10.5 and now my computer won't recognize my external Maxtor drive.
Not visible in disk utility either. Unplugged everything and started over and still nothing.
Not sure what to do next.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5), Pre Intel, iSight

Posted on Oct 27, 2007 6:25 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 27, 2007 6:27 PM in response to BenNevis

Hi! Did you unhook it while installing Leopard? Tom

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Answer 2

BenNevis Author

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Oct 27, 2007 6:28 PM in response to Thomas Bryant

No, I didn't. Was that something I should have done?

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Answer 3

Oct 27, 2007 6:34 PM in response to BenNevis

Hi! Yes, you should always disconnect usb/firewire devices when doing a major system update. Have you tried restarting the computer? If that doesn't work turn the external off, unplug it from the computer then restart the computer and then reconnect the drive and turn it on. The directory is damaged and maybe disk utility will see it then and repair it. If you get a message that the disk is unreadable click ignore and proceed to the disk utility and try to repair it. Third option is to attach it to another computer running Tiger and try and repair it from there. Tom

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Answer 4

BenNevis Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 27, 2007 6:38 PM in response to Thomas Bryant

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll try what you suggested and see what happens. My external drive is password protected. Could that be causing a problem? Also, the drive is recognized in system profiler.

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Answer 5

Oct 27, 2007 6:52 PM in response to BenNevis

Hi! The password protection could keep it from mounting. You might try connecting to a Tiger computer and then taking off the password protection until you get it to mount in Leo. Tom

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Answer 6

ssh Mac

Level 1

29 points

Oct 28, 2007 10:28 AM in response to BenNevis

I have the same issue, and I believe that it's the Maxtor OneTouch Manager that has a problem with Leopard such that it doesn't prompt for the password any more. Obviously, Leopard broke something that it was relying on. I have a request in to Maxtor and suggest you do the same.

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Answer 7

BenNevis Author

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Oct 29, 2007 5:51 AM in response to Thomas Bryant

Followed your advice and now my Mac recognizes the hard drive. Thanks for the help.

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Answer 8

BenNevis Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 29, 2007 5:55 AM in response to ssh Mac

Yep. Believe you're right bout this. Hooking the hard drive up to a Tiger computer and disabling the password solved my problem but now I'm unable to enable a NEW password on my Leopard machine.
I guess that's better than losing all my data. The Maxtor Web site has been a nightmare for me.
I only have dialup and that thing is slow for me. Thanks for you comments.

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Answer 9

Ricktoronto

Level 6

11,560 points

Oct 29, 2007 7:55 AM in response to BenNevis

I'm unable to enable a NEW password on my Leopard machine

I am dubious about the quality, crypto algorithm, strength and safety of encrypted hard drives, with boot managers and the like. Leave the password off and use encrypted disk images instead - AES-256 is now a feature of Leopard when creating these images.

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Answer 10

Oct 31, 2007 3:50 PM in response to ssh Mac

I have a Maxtor OneTouch III firewire/usb external drive and found out through research and trial and error (i wish i had saw this thread before) that for your Mac to recognize your external drive, the password for the drive needs to be turned OFF. If you don't do that, you cannot boot from your external drive.

I had a bootable external drive but was wondering why the drive won't show up when I restart my computer (while holding down option). That was the answer.

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Answer 11

JohnJ11

Level 1

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Oct 31, 2007 6:46 PM in response to BenNevis

I have the same problem with Leopard on a Macbook Pro, but have not been able to resolve it. My external hard disk was not connected when I installed Leopard. However no matter what I do, the computer will not recognize the disk. Has anyone been able to resolve this issue.

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Answer 12

BenNevis Author

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5 points

Nov 1, 2007 4:13 AM in response to JohnJ11

My problem was solved when I hooked my drive up to a Tiger machine. I emailed the people at Seagate and got this response.....
"With regards to your query, I understand that you are not able to access your Maxtor OneTouch II drive on Mac OS 10.5
To resolve this issue, please connect the drive to Mac running on OS 10.4, the previous version and disable the Password security from the drive.
Then, you can connect the drive to your Mac running on OS 10.5 and access the data on the drive.
We assure you that the updated software for Mac OS 10.5 will be soon available on our Website."

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Answer 13

JohnJ11

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2007 8:58 PM in response to BenNevis

I tried what you suggested and even took my macbook pro and maxtor drive to an apple store. They connected the drive to a computer with tiger and the software still does not recognize it. The hardware seems to be able to see that a drive is connected through the system profiler but it does not appear on the desktop or in the finder. I would appreciate any help I can get.

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Answer 14

BenNevis Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 6, 2007 8:29 AM in response to JohnJ11

One of the things I did was to get the latest update to the hard drive I was using. I went to the Maxtor site and clicked on downloads until I found my drive. In my case it was the Maxtor One Touch II Family downloads. I installed the latest utilities for the MacIntel machine even though I don't own this machine. I kinda figured that this must the the latest update so that's why I choose that one. Not sure if this will help or if you've got it figured out by now. Best of luck.

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