Little warning about Maxtor Basics portable drives

[Nevart]

I wasn't sure where to best post this, but this seems like the safest place to post it.

Just wanted to let you know that the label on the package of Maxtor Basics portable usb drives where it says "Requirements: Microsoft Windows".... they are not kidding!

Normally we know we can ignore these silly labels a lot of the time, but in the case of this drive, it absolutely fails to work in Linux at all, and not only did it not work but it killed all the files too. Undaunted, I plugged it back into Windows and tried copying more files (I used copy this time instead of "move"... lesson learned!) and plugged it back into the Mint box with the same result.

So I don't recommend this drive to Linux users. If you have used this drive successfully with Linux then please post here and tell us. There may be something different about the way you plugged it in that would be useful to know.

The drive itself was not destroyed but all the contents. It was still formatted and the only thing missing is all the files. I am guessing that the allocation table was wiped somehow, although I have no idea how or why Linux could or would do that.

For anyone who does not know about these drives, the attraction is that they are small and light and don't require an external power source because they use 2xUSB cables for power instead of 1xUSB + 1xPower as most drives do.

It is a truly horrible drive. Also in Win2k, if your PC goes to screensaver it will shut down power to the drive for some reason (doesn't for a USB mouse, so I have no idea why it does for the drive). This does not happen in XP pro.

I know none of this seems to make any sense but this is an accurate record of my real experiences with this unusual external HDD.

[remoulder]

You are probably allowing any autorun software that the manufacturers have placed on there to run. Just reformat the drive and it should work fine under linux, a simple google search shows this to be the case.

[colyn]

Format the drive to NTFS. That will kill any files and allow the drive to be used with Linux..

[vrkalak]

I have 4 portable drives . . . the 2 oldest are Maxtor. (80 and 120 Gb - respectively)

Been using them for years, now . . . I have never had any problems with them.

Didn't do anything special to get them working with Linux - just plugged them in. (mounted them, of course)