Half full Maxtor 3100 says NOT ALLOCATED

[annaoldenhave]

My extrenal drive from Maxtor (3100, 300 gigabyte) does not respond anymore. When looking at it via "my computer" etc it gets recognized as online. But it says NOT ALLOCATED. When testing it with the diagnostic tool of the 3100 maxtor I get the message : PASS.

What is wrong?
Are my data lost?

Please keep your answers simple; I am not a technical expert.

Thanks a lot for your help in advance
Greetings Anna oldenhave

 

[korrupt]

Have you checked for hardware problems such as faulty IDE cables etc?

Regards,

Korrupt

 

[annaoldenhave]

Hi!

Is that a cable inside the PC?
I have a Lacie external hard disk connected now, and this one works OK.
The Maxtor is not used at the moment

 

[Samstoned]

you can try to
open box remove drive if ide
open machine
look at cables if the 1st or 2nd cable has a empty connector plug it in
set the jumpers on drive to slave
of course machine is unplugged from wall when doing this
boot up
watch for xp to run chkdsk
do not let it run(if you can)
if you don't see the hdd in explorer
go to disk manager and assign a drive letter
if you see it without a size and can't access lookup how to take possion of drive
good idea to feel drive should feel it spinning
don't touch exposed circuits