My external Maxtor drive won’t be detected on my linux machine. I have the power cord all tight and I have firewire that I think that came with the Maxtor drive itself. It just won’t be recognized. Any help.
Failure of a rotational drive mechanism can cause a drive not to be visible. Does the drive come up on other machines?
I have a macOS but I haven’t tried it yet.
Can you hear or feel the drive spinning with the power and USB plugged in?
Do you have a second computer (Linux or windows) to also try it in?
A brief search seems to indicate this drive is a minimum of 15 years old, which is an incredible age for a portable mechanical drive. I would honestly be preparing yourself to be dealing with this drove finally being cooked beyond repair. Sure hope you kept backups of what was on it!
There are two of them and I don’t think my brother kept back ups, that is why he ask me to figure it out. I am the tech one to go to lol.
If the drive’s mechanism has indeed failed, there are data recovery places that can probably deal with it, as long as the platters aren’t damaged. They’ll put it in a cleanroom, physically open the drive, very carefully take the platters out, stick its platters into a known-good drive of the same version and revision, pull the data off and send it to you.
I don’t know what the going rate for this is, but last I looked, it was hundreds to thousands.
kagis
Sounds like that’s still accurate.
https://www.handyrecovery.com/how-much-does-data-recovery-cost/
Mechanical Failure (Expensive)
- Cost: $500–$3,000
Whenever your hard drive starts making strange noises, experiences an unfortunate encounter with water, or simply dies without any warning, you have a big problem because mechanical issues can be very expensive to repair, requiring replacement components, advanced techniques and equipment, and controlled cleanroom environment.
