I have had a Maxtor external hard drive (USB) for some years, which I use for data back-up. It no longer appears on My Computer -- it used to be Drive F. Windows' Device Manager says it is working normally, but the location is given as Location 0. Dick Empson
This could be any number of things. Try using XP's hidden Disk Management utility: go to Start, select Run and paste in diskmgmt.msc. If you right-click the drive you can give it a new file letter, but I doubt this will work.
Try plugging the external hard drive into a different PC -- preferably via a powered hub -- to see if it's a drive problem or a PC problem. If it's a drive problem it could be a loose wire, a bad USB connection or the drive may be corrupted (no MBR?) or dead. If so, your best chance of recovery is probably to remove the drive from the external case and install it as a slave in a PC.
If it's a PC problem, unplug all your USB devices, and use the Device Manager to uninstall the EHD. Power down completely, wait 30 seconds, restart the PC, then plug in the EHD and hope that Windows finds it.
