Question : Problem: Maxtor external one touch loses format

I have a customer with a Maxtor 250 GB One touch that is being used for external storage.
it has been working for about 3 months and now over the past week or two,it is no longer being see in explorer or My Computer.
I looked at disk admin,it says not initialzed,so I reinitialized and now it says not formatted.

I am now running Ontrak to recover(6 hours) the files,but something is amiss.

I have done a search and seen a couple of docs pointing to a hotfix from M$ concerning firewire(this does both),but I am using USB 2.0.
The box is a Dell P4 2.4 Ghz XP home Sp2.

I ran a quick Ontrak diag and it says the drive is OK.
I hear bad things about Maxtor,but you would have to hope that $200+ should give you some type of decent quality.

Anybody got feedback or insight?

Answer : Problem: Maxtor external one touch loses format

I too have customers w/the same issues.  I must say, I've never found a solution other than to format the drive again (which is rediculous to have to do) or convince customers to go w/seagate external to avoid this issue in the future.