Vista Tutorial - please help with maxtor basic external hd & vista(newb)

hi guys,
im new to this site & ive been trying to sort this problem out for days with no success!! i have limited pc knowledge (i know a little but im not a genius). I recentley purchased a new compaq sr5401uk pc with vista home premium 32bit, i have a maxtor basic 500 gig external hd when i plug this into the usb vista recognises the maxtor hd & gives it a letter it also shows up in my computer under that letter but when i click the icon it says :" j:/is not accessible - access denied"
This external hd worked perfectly fine on my previous pc which was running windows xp it has over 30,000 music files on it which i have been collecting for years & i WILL be devastated if i lose them!!..ive been a total numbskull & not backed them up please can anyone help me with this problem? any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

Hi,

Post a screenshot of the Disk Management Window.

To get to it, click Start Orb, rt click Computer, click Manage - in the window that opens, click Disk Management.

To post a screenshot ,click Go Advanced at the bottom of this page, after following this tutorial, steps 7 on

How to use the Snipping Tool in Vista

Hope this helps

SIW2

thanks for the help on this mate hope you can help me solve my problem..........note how vista recognises my external hd & even knows how much space is used & remains on it but it wont let me access my files strange!!.........hope i dont have to re-format it!!

dont know if this will help but this is what i get when i try to access my external hd

Hi,

Shouldn't need to format it

Looks like you will need to Take Ownership of the drive - there are two ways described here - (you may need to click Computer and right click the drive J there)

Take Ownership of file

Hope this helps

SIW2

Click the middle icon at top right of this post if it helps - thanks

THANKS SIW2!!!! YOU ARE A LEGEND!!! this sorted out my problem it took a bit of messing about but i got there in the end!! THANKS ALOT FOR YOUR HELP AMIGO!!!

Hi bunzl,

You're Welcome - Glad it worked for you

SIW2

I'm having very similar problems to these guys. I have a 500gb maxtor basic, that causes nothing but problems. when i first got it, I allocated it as the B drive. Since purchasing this hard drive, my PC keeps restarting, getting to the loading screen & then nothing....it just restarts again. when it does fancy restarting, it will either, not recognise my external hard drive or allocate it to drive F, and say it needs formating....sometimes my DVD drive is 'invisable' too. Now normally I'd just do a reinstall, but I'm worried that if i do, when it has to restart it'll do the same thing again. I've tried loading it with nothing attached (no usb devices, printer, ext hard drives etc) but to no avail. I have put up with this for the last 4 months, but it is becoming an all to regular occourance (every night, at least once). I have 2 internal hard drives, both 250gb & another 250gb external drive that cause no problems.

Any suggestions....before i kick seven shades of poo out of it....would be welcome

Thanks

Jimmy

PS....Is it worth installing XP instead or will i possibly have the same problems too?

Does it support Vista? Does it work on a non-Vista computer? Try moving it to another connection?

Hi Jimmy,

Please post a screenshot of the disk Management window.
To post a screenshot ,click Go Advanced at the bottom of this page, after following this tutorial, steps 7 on

How to use the Snipping Tool in Vista

Hope this helps

SIW2