Maxtor 250GB drive not mounting

[jprout65]

We are running OS X 10.4 on our sever with an additional Maxtor 250GB drive and today it started slowly saying server connection problems and ultimately disappeared and are now unable to mount that drive. Tried using Disk Utility to repair the drive and it will not mount the drive. Just downloaded the Norton Utilities upgrade, ran the program and it mounts but am afraid to reboot with the consequence of losing data. Should I reboot, what else can we do?

 

[Khama]

1) Get yourself a copy of Disk Warrior from Alsoft.
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

You can order a copy from your favorite vendor, or pick up a copy at your local Mac software retailer ( Fryes, CompUSA, Etc ) as well. I have used this more times to resurrect "dead" drives than I can tell you. Keep it nearby in case the drive fails again.

2) Back up the data! ( Got another drive? External Firewire Drive? )

3) Forget the Norton. They have all but forgotten about your mac, and no longer support the Mac platform. Get yourself a copy of Tech Tools 4.0.4 from Micromat.
http://www.micromat.com/tt_pro_4/tt_pro_4.html

Run the drive tests on the drive.

5) Replace if defective, or if continues to fail.

6) If you can afford it, set up a RAID mirror drive on the server, so that if this happens again, you have an immediate backup that is instantly accessible.

Khama