Other External products

[tffgong87]

My 500gb one touch 4 has become corrupted.  I've reformatted and it just becomes corrupted again after copying files into it.  It allows me to view the folders in the drive but not open them.  I don't know what to do I'm thinking the hard drive defective. Please help.

[TRoss]

How are you removing the drive when not in use?

[SidewinderX]

What do you mean when you say "corrupted"? Does Window (or Mac or some flavor of Linux) "see" the drive? Does it ask you if you want to reformat the drive? Is it connected to a powered USB slot?

[pmbaustin]

This same problem occured with me.

I noticed the system tray icon was red, when it should have been green.  Everything had been working fine for weeks.

Now the Maxtor Manager reports either a capacity of 500Gb (correct) but 0 free space, or a capacity of 0 with 0 free space, and a file system that is just three squares, rather than "NTFS".

Attempting to click on the drive in Windows Explorer gives the "Corrupted or Unreadable" error.

I just leave my drive attached at all times (like I should... it's a backup drive, backing up on regular intervals... why would I ever disconnect it?)

Right now, it's a useless doorstop... someone tell me what happened, how to fix it, and how to prevent it from happening again!

[pmbaustin]

Well, I opened a DOS window and manually formatted the Maxtor OneTouch 4 on the F: drive, which took HOURS to complete, but things seem to be working again.

I've found lots of reports of this thing becoming suddenly corrupted for no apparent reason.  Should I be concerned that this is going to happen again??

[pmbaustin]

It happend AGAIN?!?

I just rebooted my machine, and when it came back, the Maxtor software popped up and said the drive appeared to be unformatted or to have no partition.  It didn't show up in Windows Explorer as my F: drive like normal either.

What the heck is going on?  This thing is useless if this is how it's going to behave... losing it's data every few days. 

HELP??

[pmbaustin]

It asked to repartition, but then reported the attempt failed.

I tried the "fix" I read about in another thread here of just powering down the device and then powering it back up and then plugging it back in the USB port. 

That worked.  Everything came back.

But... this is still unacceptable.  This is a bug right?  Is there going to be a fix?  I should be able to just leave this thing plugged in and not have to micromanage it every time there's a reboot or something.  I never power down, but I do reboot to apply updates and install software, as well as just every few days to keep Windows happy (it seems to slow down over time, and reboots seem to help).

A backup device should inspire confidence.  I'm to the point of having almost no confidence in this thing...

[AlanM]

pmbaustin,

Thanks for your participation in the our forums so far. Please remember that this is an online community where many of the responses come from other users, such as yourself. The forum is not a replacement for Customer Service. Seagate representative do from time to time come to lend a hand answering posts but not necessarily on a continual or frequent basis. If you have immediate needs, your best bet is to contact Customer Service directly whether by phone, email, or chat.

One very important piece of advice:  BACKUP all your data.  Even the highest-quality, most expensive hard drive ever produced will fail eventually and it is impossible to predict when that will occur. Given that, it is absolutely essential at all times to keep a backup of your any data you do not want to lose.

Thanks.

-AlanM
Admin

[pmbaustin]

Well, yes, this IS a back-up drive, it's supposed to be backing up my data, but it keeps losing it, so... the advice to "back up all your data" is kind of inappropriate, since that's exactly what I'm trying to do, and your device isnt' lending me any confidence in these backups.

[AlanM]

That may be. 
I'm simply asking you to make sure that you safeguard against any drive failure, whether external or internal. 
Don't let pride get in the way of guarding against data loss.