I have a maxtor 500 external hard drive when i plug it to the mains it goes to start up for 10 seconds then dies. Any ideas?

Yes, it will be compatible, because it is a "plug-and-play" device that Vista supports.

You have what is call a USB POWER Y ADAPTER: this is designed to provide extra current to your USB HDD drive from a second PC USB port. Plug the end with two USB connectors to your PC/LAPTOP and the single-ended plug to your drive.
Hope it helps! Let me know how you go.

The Maxtor STM901601EHD301-RK is part of the Maxtor Basics Portable family.

It uses a 2.5 inch Internal harddrive inside. (2 and a half inches across the Width. Same size used for a laptop. Desktop's use 3.5)

It connects with a USB Style A male plug, via the USB cable.
It's has a 160GB storage capacity, has an 8MB Buffer, (Cache), and an External Data Transfer Rate of 60 MegaBytes per Second.

Other than that, I find no more information from Seagate, (Seagate bought out Maxtor, and has the data base for Maxtor products)

http://hddlist.com/maxtor/all/maxtor_basics_portable

What I do know in reference to your question.
I know that the USB 2.0 technology uses 5 Volts DC. The Positive pin on the USB plug will support up to 5 Volts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USB.svg

[Viewing a USB-A style plug, view it with the white plastic spacer at the bottom. Open part at top. The Positive pin is all the way to the right. The Negative pin all the way to the left. The Data + pin is on the left next to the Negative pin. The Data - pin is on the right, next to the Positive pin]

The Maximum current draw is 500 mA for a USB 2.0 port.
[ Current is rated in Amperes, or Amp's. You are looking at Millionths of an Amp.
Milliamp, or abbreviated as mA]

This would lead me to believe that the Maxtor Basics Portable external harddrives will not use more than 500 Milliamp's.

However I do not feel comfortable, telling you that it is okay to use your Maxtor STM901601EHD301-RK, on your Yamaha PSR2-900 keyboard. Would hate to be mistaken, and have you burn out the finals of your keyboard.

I do feel comfortable with the following suggestion.

What about transferring as much data as you can from the Maxtor Basics Portable, to a USB thumb drive? They have large thumb drives now, and hold a lot of data.

Most programs will fit on a large USB thumb drive.
Or am I missing the point somewhere?

Right click on my computer and go to manage, then go to storage, disk manager and see if the disk shows up there, you may need to partition it first, you can make one partition of that hard drive. If it is not in there, check the jumpers and make sure it is not the same as the main HD. The main drive should be master and the second drive should be slave, or make it cable select and do it in the bios.

if there is warranty take it back to the shop you bought it from.

In XP and Vista no need to install.
They will detect automatically.
To know, goto Windows explorer.
Find drive letter other than your local drive.
Usually called "removable disk".

The PSU for my Maxtor 500Gb 9NZ2A4-500 drive is 12V DC, 2A rating, 2.1mm "plug" with centre "hole" as positive.

Regards, kbsguru

it is a software issue. run the software and apply the password. i had the same problem email me at [email protected] for more assistance

The drive is dying. If it is still under warranty, call Maxtor for a replacement.

Hi, Normally the steps would be: 1. In your PC, in the System Tray, click on the "Safely Remove Hardware" and then on the "Safely Remove USB Mass Storage Device-Drive(?); 2. Unplug USB cable; 3. Power down external device. Hope this be of some help/idea. Good luck and kind regards.