Quirkiness of Maxtor One Touch 4 External HD

16 years ago

Warning: Watch out for System Restore, and be sure you use the Safely Disconnect Hardware feature in XP, if you want to disconnect the drive.

I wrote on another thread about trying to install programs on my husband's 300GB Maxtor external HD. The day after buying that one, we bought a 500GB Maxtor One Touch 4 for me, because I'm the one who collects all the pictures and buys a lot of music.

I have found that my Maxtor, at least, has a few quirks. After I used System Restore, in the hopes of going back to Windows Media 10, the external HD wouldn't work right. Not realizing at that point that I should use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the sys. tray, I thought I could simply detach the USB cable. Big mistake! (Or maybe I would have had trouble anyway.)

I got a message saying I had to format the external drive--losing all my data, of course. I didn't want to do that. Reversing the Sys. Restore did exactly nothing for the drive. I thought I had ruined the drive, but after I had completely disconnected the Maxtor for several minutes and then plugged in the USB cable and adaptor again, it brought up the installation program and I was able to perform a Repair install that worked. My info was still there.

I thought my problems were over, but last night, merely changing the Maxtor's backup settings made my mouse stop working and I had to push the PC's power button to shut it down. This morning, I couldn't get at the contents of the Maxtor at all. It variously reported that there was no recognizable partition, then that there was no such device on the computer, and then that it was there, but had only one partition, which was something like 63GB in size and had no free space left. I was unable to get it to offer me the chance to do a Repair install, this time. However, fortunately, disconnecting it and waiting awhile before plugging it in again, plus restarting the computer, returned it to normal.

I sure hope the drive is not going to act up now every time I access it!

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Comments (8)

cboy
16 years ago
Maxtor has a lot of hang ups. Right now I have one were I can't get to Backup Status.
The green Icon on your lower right.
biwako_of_abi
Original Author
16 years ago
Cboy: You mean the green icon doesn't appear at all? I haven't lost that, but I also have an icon on my desktop, having created a shortcut.
This morning, my nice green sys. tray icon brought up this information: Partition unknown, Capacity, 2.2TB (TB!!!!!), and Free, 0. I unplugged the electric adaptor and the USB cable, first using the Safely Disconnect Hardware icon in the sys. tray, and went to breakfast. When I came back and plugged everything in again, it worked. I even clicked around and looked to see what was in the backup, and my mouse still worked. Go figure!
I hope your problem can be (albeit maybe only temporarily!) solved so easily.
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Today I tried to add several more folders and got the message saying the Maxtor was full. It is 160GB. I right clicked on the Icon on my task bar and opened view backup log. The only date showing on the page that opened up is from the back up dated Monday Jan 3. I then tried going to explorer found the Maxtor opened it up found all the files that I store and use daily and in this folder was a folder that says Maxtor backup. Opened this up there are two files one says Home and some numbers the other file says user and has some numbers. When I opened the file that says Home it has two file folders one says C and the other file says History which in the history has 10 file folders each name level one level two and so on. In the User file folder it has 3 folders one says C one says D and one says history. I think this must be from my old computer 2 years ago. As I had a C drive and a D drive. This new computer only has the C drive. I hope this helps. I am not too computer smart and no one in my family nor friends use computers. Thank you for your help.
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Carol, hopefully others will come along with their ideas so you can pick the best of the bunch that suits your style. I am like Randy and use Acronis True Image, mine is version 7, for my backups. You would need something similar for the initial backup. I got mine when Acronis made it a free offer for a while. The idea was to get us to use it then buy the upgrade, a nice ploy too but I have stayed with version 7 so far. Regarding the timed backups of your personal data you might consider creating one folder for your work with sub folders for each program you use rather than allow each to store their work where they want it. Then it is a simple matter of copying that folder with all it's sub folders to the external drive any old time your heart desires. Using the method I have described you will overwrite the previously saved data folder. You will be prompted to agree to overwrite so you then have a choice of renaming the folder if you want more than one copy of your saved work.
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Loralee you can use Windows Explorer to remove any entries from the computer hard drive or the external although if it is a program then the Add/Remove feature should be used first then check Explorer for remnants left by untidy uninstallers. In Windows Explorer up at the top is a small box icon with a down arrow, here you can elect to see the contents as bare names, Details, icons etc. Select Details so you can see the date and size of each backup. Now you can compare them and if they are all somewhat of the same size then you could safely assume they are all full backups and later ones not incremental on the original. Of course the best solution in my mind would be to run a full anti virus and anti malware scan, run Ccleaner or similar to clean all the junk off the computer then create a new image and remove all the others. That is as long as you are happy with the way the computer is behaving right now. No point backing up while there are any annoying issues unresolved.
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I'm assuming that you are making 'compressed' backup sets. Such a backup set is one large file that contains a compressed set of all the files chosen for backup. It has a special file structure. Keep in mimd that it is only one big file. Incremental backup stores only new-files and changed-files written since the last backup. You start with a full backup and then periodically do incremental backups. At some point, it is advisable to start over with a new full backup. Here's why. To restore a file set containing incremental backups, you have to start with the full backup set and then restore all incremental backups in the same order as they were written. In this way, all file revisions gets restored in proper order ending with the last version. Newer versions of a file overwrites the older version. A minor nusiance can appear. Old deleted files can reappear. For example, suppose you had file "A" and it was included in the first incremental backup. later, it was discarded and does not appear in later incremental backups. It will reappear while doing a full restore. A lot of folks do not use incremental backups, but do only full backups. Its less confusing, but uses much more storage space and time. I simplify my backups by not using a compressed backup set. I keep all my improtant data on one logical drive. Since I have a very large external drive, I merely make an ordinary copy of my data drive to the external drive. To enhance relibility (life) of the backup drive, it is turned off most of the time and turned on only for file copying. These days, RAID arrays is the popular way to maintain files. RAID has the advantage of automatically keepng duplicate files and can recover from a loss of one of the drives in the array. I'm not sure about the minimum number of drives required to gurantee a recovery from the loss of s drive.
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bus_driver
16 years ago
How I wish I had seen this thread earlier! I just bought a Maxtor OneTouch 4 external hard drive, sealed box. As soon as I opened it, I discovered that it has no on/off switch. I have another, older Maxtor external hard drive that does have a switch. I turn it on only when I need it, no problem. I had planned to do the same with the new one. I have not yet installed the software with the OneTouch4 and now am leaning toward donating the thing to Goodwill and buying a simpler drive. I do not like my computer accessories taking control away from me. Suggestions based on your experience of the last few days?
cboy
16 years ago
I solved my Backup Status with a system restore. I got rid
Internet Explorer 7.0 and the problem hasn't returned.

Mine has a button to turn it off and on but after using it
a few times I found it best to leave it alone. Instead of
using the off button I set the Maxtor Timer to turn off in
3 minutes when not in use. Try it. If you place your hand
on your Maxtor you can feel the vibration when it on and
no vibration when it's not working. The light stays on always.
biwako_of_abi
Original Author
16 years ago
Bus Driver: Several mornings, when I turned on my computer, I got the message that the Maxtor "wasn't there" or something like that. However, I found that if I clicked on the Remove Hardware Safely icon in the System Tray and then unplugged both USB and electric cables and plugged them in again after a minute (even a short time seems to reset it), then I "get it back".

For the last three days, I haven't had to do that; it hasn't given me any trouble on start-up, and the mouse has not frozen when I checked the things inside the drive, so I am OK with the way it is now. After all, it only cost $99.99 for 500GB. I wouldn't give it away, although I admit that the next external drive I buy will probably NOT be a Maxtor!

Maybe there is hope for your drive, too. You can always turn it off by clicking on the Sys. Tray icon and choosing Exit, but if you are only concerned about saving energy, you can do what CBoy does. I have mine set to turn off if it isn't used for 10 minutes.
bus_driver
16 years ago
I suppose that the "turn off" setting is in the software, since I have not installed the software. But the clicking and unplugging/plugging is more than I want do and is completely unreasonable on the part of Maxtor/Seagate. I want the drive to help me, not waste my time and frustrate me. Mine came with one tiny book that has about 6 pages. No other instructions.
bus_driver
16 years ago
I just went to the website for tech support for Maxtor products. Seagate acquired them in 2006. The OneTouch4 is not even listed on the website. Definitely not much of an outfit or products, in my opinion.
cboy
16 years ago
Maxtor 4 One Touch
http://www.maxstore.com/product.asp?sku=3706860
Maxtor 4
The Maxtor Exterior hard drive can be used to record using
Dish Network. It can only be used on computers or TV, not both at the same time. You have to get the correct Receiver from Dish Network.
I don't care to record that many movies myself. My receiver
(PVR 501) was one of the first out and it will record about 30 hours. I think they now use DVR (whatever)Their are different numbers for different receivers.
I forget exactly.

Quirkiness of Maxtor One Touch 4 External HD

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cboy

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Quirkiness of Maxtor One Touch 4 External HD

Comments (8)

cboy

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