I've just recently backed up a friend's laptop to a Maxtor USB external drive so that we could reload Windows XP. Now the external drive doesn't show up on the Start Menu. I've check the Seagate site and it looks like the drive has been 'goosed'. Is there any recovery?

ArtWhat do you mean it doesn't show on the Start Menu? Open Windows Explorer. Is the driver there?Allan

If I right click the Start BUTTON and 'Explore' the drive is missing. If I go into Control panel/System/Device drivers it is listed under 'disk drives'. If I double cick on the drive it says it is working normally but if I then go to 'Volumes' all the fields are blank.

ArtDoes it show up in Disk Management (Start-Run-diskmgmt.msc)? If so, does it show as available?Allan,

It shows as 'Unallocated'

ArtThen it was probably unplugged without using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon...

Unfortunately the end result of this most times is a total loss of data...

You could try and run Recuva on it to see if ANYTHING is salvageable...No it remained connected all the time I was loading.

ArtI've downloaded Recuva but it can only 'see' drive C

ArtYeah. Unfortunately "unallocated" MEANS unformatted. I'm not sure what happened, but as far as your system is concerned the drive needs to be formatted (and of course if there IS anything on the drive, formatting will completely erase it). Quote from: patio on July 20, 2010, 08:54:05 AM

Then it was probably unplugged without using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon...

Patio, I don't believe that would cause the drive to show up as "unallocated" - but I could be mistaken.