Maxtor HD no longer recognized

[kevinl]

I have been using retrospect express 5.6 to BU my HD onto my Maxtor 5000LE external HD (USB connection). I thought I had been doing this succesfully for a 5 to 6 months, but have realized that my automatic backups have not been occuring as planned for a few months. In checking things out, Retrospect does not seem to recognize the drive, and under "status", shows no backup devices found. Under "Environment", the maxtor drive does show up. The drive is also accesible through windows explorer. Since the BU procedure was working, I no it is possible, but can not figure out what has gone wrong. I would be happy to just delete the previos BU info and start fresh, but would like to keep a number of files I have stored on the external HD if possible. In order to do anything though, I will first need to get Retrospect to recognize the Maxtor drive.

 

Whenever I try to use Retrospect, the red light on the Maxtor drive flashes and it is spinning, however the program locks up, and I can not even close it. Must shut down system some times in order to end program.

 

Any help, or pointers of where to go would be very much appreciated.

 

Info:

 

OS - winxp Professional

Drive - <20% full

 

Regards, Kevin Luckhart

 

[AmyJ]

See the following tutorial for setup help on backing up to hard drives. You can delete the file backup set that is currently on the Maxtor drive.

 

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=27447

 

Quote:

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Whenever I try to use Retrospect, the red light on the Maxtor drive flashes and it is spinning, however the program locks up, and I can not even close it. Must shut down system some times in order to end program.

 

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Windows XP has a "System Restore" feature turned on by default. This option will attempt to cache large files created by Retrospect, which results in heavy disk activity and what appears like a freeze. Mutli-GB file backup sets are likely to trigger this behavior. If you wait an extended period of time, the disk activity will stop and the computer will once again be usable.

 

To increase backup stability try turn off "System Restore" in the System Properties for "all drives" by going to: Control Panels > System > System Restore.

 

If the file backup set is on a USB or Firewire disk, try the following:

 

1. Power down your machine

 

2. Disconnect the FireWire or USB hard drive

 

3. Re-boot

 

4. When the machine is back up, turn of the System Restore

 

Start> Settings> Control Panel> System> System Restore Tab

 

5. Put a check in the Turn off System Restore box. Click Apply, then click OK

 

6. Power the system down and reconnect the external drive.

 

7. Reboot and it should work correctly.