Hi, my name is Scott Herring and i need help with moving Maya 2011 to another hard drive.

When i purchased my student copy of Maya 2011 I installed it on an external hard drive that i keep constantly connected to my computer, because my internal drive is far too small to store anything (80 gigabytes) so i installed it on a western digital 500 gigabyte drive. But now its starting to backfire on me, i have worked maya and other autodesk products including mudbox and 3DS Max in this manner and it has served me well, I’ve had no problems with this method of installation. But it seems that the hard drive I’ve installed it on is starting to fail me. It will not connect to my computer even if it’s plugged in the computer. My hard drive just stopped connecting to my computer literally overnight, I have no clue why this happened… It won’t even connect to another computer the problem is the hard drive itself.

So with that said, i can’t use any of my Autodesk products because it’s on a hard drive that does not exist, because it will not connect, no matter what USB port I use or even what kind of cord I use.

I can’t uninstall Maya because while my computer reads in the control panel’s install/uninstall programs list, i can’t uninstall it because a window with an error message pops up that says that drive E:/ aka my external drive, is not connected. So i can’t do anything with it.

I need to find a way to get it off my computer so i can re-install it onto another hard drive, somehow by deleting some specific files on my computer, but i’m not sure what… because i can’t access the hard drive i installed it on my computer, and unless my hard dive miraculously starts to work again, i can’t look it up where i installed it and take it off. there’s something on my computer that allows it to continue being recognized. I need to take that off so i can put the 2011 suite disk in and allow me to install my Autodesk products again.

If there is anything that anyone can offer me, i would be glad to hear it! I don’t care if i really need to do some hardcore digging on my computer. I just want to be able to use it again.

I know this is a very uncommon issue and more of a computer related issue than a Maya issue, but I’ve been digging around the internet with no success, i need more help, this is really slowing my work down! Anything helps!

Thank you

-Scott