Maxtor One- Touch II External Drive Locked

[Steve Mitchell]

A worst nightmare scenario. I have a two month old Maxtor One - Touch II 300gb external drive (with drive lock, which I did not activate). All of a sudden it shows as a "locked drive" in the "other" category in "my computer". I've tried to access it on a couple of computers with the same result. After googling the problem, I've tried all the fixes posted on the web with no luck. Anyone here have any ideas?

[Anders Östberg]

Take a long vacation?... no, I'm sorry, I have no clue and should not make a joke about it. What a nightmare, I hope it works out for you.

[Kona Fan]

Steve,

Is there a way on PC to ignore ownership on the volume? I know this is an option on Macs, and is a recommended workaround for a similar issue wherein the drive mounts as read-only.

I've had good luck with Maxtor customer service in the past, might be worth a call. Sorry couldn't be more help.

[FredG]

I have 3 such drives and did not know a drive lock existed. If it can be activated, it can (hopeflly) be de-activated. I echo the Maxtor service suggestion. Please post the final outcome.

[Steve Mitchell]

Well, bad news. Spent about an hour on with their tech suppot. (I must say the gentleman was very professional and knowledgable). Unfortunately it seems to be a problem with the drive itself). The only hope is an outside recovery service which is big $$$. They are sending a replacement.

[Anders Östberg]

Ouch...

[FredG]

Sorry to hear it. Guess I better get busy sorting things out so I really do have the redundancy I think I have.

[Kevin Sadler]

sorry to hear that. i use a seagate 300gb external and after a couple of weeks got really scared to have all those pix there and bought another one that i back up too. the size of files these days and the number of shots we take at a single event make cd's and dvd's as backup almost unusable, especially if you're busy. it may be a decent alternative in the future. best of luck on getting your data back.

[rjgleason]

Isn't there some sort of restore program that comes with the Maxtor II....? I think its called Retro-Express but I am not sure if recovery is part of what the program does.

[trgtc]

Hi Steve,

I'm not familiar with Maxtor's Drive Lock, but I'll offer some thoughts in the hope that they may be of use.

1) If the Drive Lock feature is part of the external case and not the drive itself, you could try taking the drive out of the case and attaching it as an internal drive.

2) If the Drive Lock is a part of the Hard Drive, and exists only on the circuit board (not the platters), you could try swapping the circuit board for one from an identical drive.

If a drive recovery company can get the data off your hard drive, then chances are that you can too. Keep digging around for info.

This kind of reminds me of the Mazda Miata Radio Anti-Theft System from the early 1990's. If power was removed from the radio, the lock would engage and prevent use of the radio/tape deck until the proper code was entered. If you forgot the code, you had to pay a dealer to unlock it. Eventually, the reset procedure (pressing the right buttons in the right order) was leaked to the public, and people were no longer at the mercy of the car dealer if the radio got locked by accident.

There has to be some way to unlock that drive.

Good Luck,

Jon

[FredG]

Originally Posted by trgtc

Hi Steve,

I'm not familiar with Maxtor's Drive Lock, but I'll offer some thoughts in the hope that they may be of use.

1) If the Drive Lock feature is part of the external case and not the drive itself, you could try taking the drive out of the case and attaching it as an internal drive.

2) If the Drive Lock is a part of the Hard Drive, and exists only on the circuit board (not the platters), you could try swapping the circuit board for one from an identical drive.

If a drive recovery company can get the data off your hard drive, then chances are that you can too. Keep digging around for info.

This kind of reminds me of the Mazda Miata Radio Anti-Theft System from the early 1990's. If power was removed from the radio, the lock would engage and prevent use of the radio/tape deck until the proper code was entered. If you forgot the code, you had to pay a dealer to unlock it. Eventually, the reset procedure (pressing the right buttons in the right order) was leaked to the public, and people were no longer at the mercy of the car dealer if the radio got locked by accident.

There has to be some way to unlock that drive.

Good Luck,

Jon

Looks like you may have hit it, Jon. I remember that same feature on an old Mercedes I had. Anyway, I found this as part of the maxtor drive descriptions:Maxtor DriveLock password protects the drive content in case of loss or unauthorized use.

Steve,
if you haven't seen it, there's a QA for that here.

[trgtc]

Steve,

The Maxtor info that Fred's post points to indicates that you can unlock the drive by erasing it. If you have given up on recovering the data from the drive, you might want to try doing a NON-destructive erasure of the drive (you'll need to do some research on what will do this best), and then after you have access to the drive again use a file recovery utility. Norton Unerase may work, but there are many other utilities out there. With a little research, a couple of prayers, and a virgin sacrifice just for good measure you may get your files back. If you have accepted the possibility that your data is lost, it certainly is worth a shot.

Good luck,

Jon