The Parameter is Incorrect

Tue Feb 08, 2005 1:49 am

I left my computer on a few days ago while I went to school, and my dad decided to shut it down while I wasn't home. When I arrive back and turn my computer back on, I find that my external hard drive (G:\) is not longer working. It was working just fine when I left this morning.

Upon opening My Computer and double clicking on Local Drive (G:\), I recieve the following error:

G:\ is not accessible
The parameter is incorrect.

I had 60gigs of data on that drive, and all of it was stuff that I wanted to keep. Is there any way that I can fix this drive without losing the data? (or without losing much of it)

Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:33 am

is the external drive plugged in and has power? thats all i can think of .....

Tue Feb 08, 2005 3:26 am

Yeah; it's plugged in, LED's light up, and I can hear it spinning. I've tried chkdsk and it returns an error. I've tried actually opening it and checking all the connections** inside to make sure that they were tight and they were.

**I mess around with electronics a lot and have never once busted one when I had it opened up. Provided, nobody is perfect, but I am just clarifying that I highly doubt I did any further damage to it while I had it open. It still appears to work fine (LED's, shows up in My Comp, hear it spinning), so I assume that I did no further harm to it.

Tue Feb 08, 2005 3:49 am

Hmm...I don't know what kind of drive you have, but did it come with a user manual or help file on your computer? It might have basic troubleshooting.

Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:29 am

Best that I could say, as of now, is that it's an 80gig external Maxtor drive. I've tried all of the troubleshooting guides that I can find, and none of them have helped.

Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:14 am

The best recommendation I can give you is: try to manipulate the contents of this external HD via DOS. This way, no problems from that lovely OS called Windows XP will get in the way. There are a few distros such as FreeDOS that allow you to boot DOS from a floppy. Then you can use the "copy" command to manually back-up the files you still want. If it doesn't work, then your HD is gone for good. But if I can give you some advice, DON'T BUY MAXTOR. Their products are always full of flaws and this problem of yours seems to be recurring in their HD's.

Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:10 am

I've tried copying, and even just viewing the files in DOS, and I can't get into the hard drive. I didn't know about the problems with Maxtor's until I started having one myself; I personally probably would've bought a LaCie, but I received this hard drive as a Christmas present (loved it, too, until the problem).

Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:51 pm

First off, see if it works in another computer.

Second, call maxtor's customer service.

Third, find a data recovery service.

Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:54 pm

Then all that's left would be visiting a qualified professional with proficiency in data restorage. It's not cheap, it's not likely to recover 100% of the data... but it will save most of your files (probably).

Maybe there is a hacked firware that can correct this problem to some extent? I doubt it, but it's worth a shot. I can't give you any leads, though. IRC is usually the best place to get this sort of thing... but you kow the deal, right...