I purchased a 120GB Western Digital external USB 2.0 HDD two weeks ago for storing video. Reformatted it to NTFS, installed the Retrospect disk, computer rightly assigned it to drive J (C is partitioned through G and have a CD-ROM and a DVD/RW drive), everything worked peachy, including putting mpegs on it and could access them at first. I always turn off the power button before removing the USB cable. I rarely shut off the computer itself, but I did last week. Now I have no drive letter for the external and can't access anything on it, although it shows up in device manager as unallocated. Discovered one thing I thought was odd when I began to image with Norton Ghost. It showed a hierarchy of "Disk 1-No Ghost Disk ID" with C, D, E, F, and G, under it but indented, just as if you opened up a folder in Windows Explorer with subfolders under it, all in a line. Hope that makes sense. Went to the Western Digital site, found a question about the problem of the drive not showing up, they say it's a Microsoft issue. Went to Microsoft, seems they are "working on it". Did a Google search, found a lot of Macs and some PCs with the problem. Mine is a PC, Windows XP2, 1GB RAM. I would even purchase another external drive if I had to, but since the problem seems to be fairly common, and if it is a software problem, I can't buy a new drive every time I have to turn off my computer. Any answers for this would be so appreciated.
have you tried removing it from the device manager and rebooting, to let windows find the drive again?
& why shut down the computer as only time i do that on mine is when i want to remove the external thru the taskbar, windows sometimes hiccup & won't allow me to properly disconnect.
Auslander, thanks, I had great hopes it would work, but it didn't. I appreciate the advice anyway. ddp, mine has never (so far in the short time I've had it) been quirky about letting me remove the hardware safely. I just had to shut down the computer, nothing to do with the external drive itself. Sure wish I or someone could figure this one out. Office Max said they would exchange it, but I hate to lose my files that I think are still on there, and if it's going to happen on a regular basis from a software glitch, it's not worth dealing with. Drat.
if a lot of people are suffering from this, it's most likely a software problem, not an issue with your drive, i'd say. and if M$ is working on it, you can count on not having a decent solution for several years. hope a fix finds it's way to you, sysyphus. i'll keep my eyes looking.
i don't have that problem with my 40gig usb laptop drive or various 3.5" hd's in my external usb case! i'm using win98se!
Yes, I figure if it's a software problem with MS, it will be a while. From what I've read, it's already been a while. Seems like some of the Macs are faring better on this one, though, with firmware upgrades. Maybe they've worked out the bugs with 98 finally, after how many years now? I went from 95 to XP and finally like it, more stable, but.... Guess they'll work it about about the time MS comes out with a new and "better" OS that needs fixing forever, ad infinitum. Guess I'll try an exchange and see if I can get more than two weeks out of it. Again, drat!
