Maxtor Onetouch 4 Mini Detection Issue

More likely either the drive has failed or the bridge electronics inside the enclosure or its power supply has failed. Contact the manufacturer (Maxtor/Seagate) or the vendor from whom it was purchased for support.

Hello, I am wondering if your issue has been solved after contacting Maxtor? I am facing the same issue now - my Maxtor Onetouch Mini can't be read even though I've been using it for Time Machine.

Hey, realized my problem's a little different. I can't read mine my Maxtor Onetouch 4 Mini on the Finder but I can see it in my Disk Utility... I would really appreciate some advice. Thank you.

Hey, realized my problem's a little different. I can't read mine my Maxtor Onetouch 4 Mini on the Finder but I can see it in my Disk Utility... I would really appreciate some advice. Thank you.

Without any more information than you've provided I'd suggest reformatting the drive:

Extended Hard Drive Preparation

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Hi, thanks for your reply.. my apologies to be asking more questions, not too sure if i am going through the right steps.

firstly, if i am going to use this hard disk as a backup, it is not my startup volume, is it? would i still need to boot from my OS X Installer Disc, and how do i go about doing that?

without going through the installer disc, i entered DU and clicked on partition. the SMART status currently says "not supported". i did exactly as you described in step (3), but instead an error popped up, saying "partition error: operation timed out". i've tried it a few times but the same error occurred.

i'm stuck at this step... appreciate if you could advise.

Hey I managed to solve the issue... Thank you so much for your help.

What I did was I reformatted the hard disk using the Maxtor software on a friend's windows vista and added a file to the disk. With this I brought it back to my Mac and went through the whole DU process of erasing. Now my Mac reads it and I can use it with Time Machine (i'm crossing my fingers that nothing will go wrong again).

I added a file to the disk after formatting with windows because DU didn't seem to work without the file added from windows. not sure what that means.

but anyway, am just very glad to have solved this issue, and thanks again.