Peripherals forum: Fix - Maxtor - The parameter is incorrect

History
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My Maxtor USB One Touch 250GB hard disk just flaked out the other day, I recently upgraded to XP3, but I don't think this was the problem,
and wasn't caused by any anti-virus, drives like these regularly need disk defragmenting and moreover, it is advisable to disconnect the USB drive properly!. I'm a developer, enough said

You should either, Right Click on the icon in Windows tray, and select "safely remove hardware" to stop the device, or:

1. Open Windows Explorer, highlight the drive e.g. e:,
select Properties,Click on the Hardware tab, and select
Properties again.
2. Select the Polices tab, and select "Optimise for Quick Removal"

The Nightmare
-------------
One morning, I woke up to find that I could not access the drive, my backup of year of work!, and when it did work it was very very slow, giving me the good old classic Windows informative :0) error:

E:\ is inaccessible
"The parameter is incorrect"

Blue touch light was on, and I could hear the drive spinning, so no
fuse problem.

I'm going to tell you how I fixed it, I'm sure it will work for you unless you have a physical hard disk problem with your drive, and even
then, it should be able to mark your bad sectors for Windows to read the drive.

The Solution
------------

Step
1. Select START, select Run and type: CMD
2. Click OK
3. Type: chkdsk e: /F you can also use /R after the /F
4. Where e: is the drive of your Maxtor disk
5. Go make a cup of tea, it could be real slow if you have a big
hard disk, mine took 20 mins.
6. You will get something like this below, let Chkdsk finish
7. Shazzam, enjoy accessing your hard disk again
8. Remember USB is different to SATA and IDE, so its fussy, you
need to shut it down properly.

Yip as easy as that,

Good luck
Steve


C:\Documents and Settings\Steve Davis>chkdsk e: /F
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is SDMAXTOR.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 5.
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 5.
Sorting index $I30 in file 5.
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 193831.
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 193831.
Sorting index $I30 in file 193831.
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 212186.
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 212186.
Sorting index $I30 in file 212186.
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is recovering lost files.
Recovering orphaned file $MFT (0) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $MFTMirr (1) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $LogFile (2) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $Volume (3) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $AttrDef (4) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file . (5) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $Bitmap (6) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $Boot (7) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $BadClus (8) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $Secure (9) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $UpCase (10) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $Extend (11) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file ARCHIV~1 (139211) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file ARCHIVEWESTEX (139211) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file buildmachine (143894) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file AWP CMS.lnk (157538) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file AWPCMS~1.LNK (157538) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file bad (163493) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file Budha (170079) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file ALBUMA~1.JPG (170253) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file AlbumArtSmall.jpg (170253) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file ALBUMA~2.JPG (179489) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file AlbumArt_{795B8FEE-CBD2-4D66-A5E1-64C84872658D}_Small.
pg (179489) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file aris (188579) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file ALBUMA~3.JPG (189900) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file AlbumArt_{795B8FEE-CBD2-4D66-A5E1-64C84872658D}_Large.
pg (189900) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file desktop.ini (189907) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file ALBUMA~4.JPG (189913) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file AlbumArt_{2DA08384-6060-40CC-A0B6-DD887ABF473C}_Small.
pg (189913) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file ALF14D~1.JPG (189914) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file AlbumArt_{2DA08384-6060-40CC-A0B6-DD887ABF473C}_Large.
pg (189914) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file DISKCH~1.CNT (193832) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file DiskCheckup.cnt (193832) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file DISKCH~1.EXE (193833) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file DiskCheckup.exe (193833) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file DISKCH~1.MAN (193834) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file DiskCheckup.exe.manifest (193834) into directory file
93831.
Recovering orphaned file DISKCH~1.HLP (193835) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file DISKCHECKUP.HLP (193835) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file WinMe (193836) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file Win9x (193838) into directory file 193831.
Recovering orphaned file 50cent (194218) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file 02-THE~1.MP3 (194246) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file 02 - The Uppercut Ft. Outlawz.mp3 (194246) into direc
ory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file 2PAC-O~1.MP3 (194247) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file 2pac - One Day At A Time (feat. Eminem and Outlawz).mp
(194247) into directory file 212186.
Recovering orphaned file BIGDOW~1 (195952) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file BIGDOWNLOAD (195952) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file APPLIC~1 (203835) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file Applications (203835) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $VAULT$.AVG (206094) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file BIGMOVIE (206530) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $RECYCLE.BIN (220758) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $AVG8~1.VAU (279491) into directory file 5.
Recovering orphaned file $AVG8.VAULT$ (279491) into directory file 5.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
Correcting errors in the Master File Table (MFT) mirror.
Correcting errors in the uppercase file.
Adding 3 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

245111705 KB total disk space.
198815704 KB in 260461 files.
92300 KB in 19376 indexes.
12 KB in bad sectors.
356365 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
45847324 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61277926 total allocation units on disk.
11461831 allocation units available on disk.

p.s. As you can see, quite a bit of work to do, but chkdsk can
handle it.