External hard drive problem

[chs`amadeus]

Im not too sure exactly whats going on here, its a repetitive issue. After a fresh windows install my external usb2.0 drive works fine but after a few days it seems to drop the usb driver and i just get an "unknown device" symbol in my system tray instead of the new hardware plugged in, along with stats on my computer in signature im running windowsxp sp2, my usb 2.0 drivers are up to date as is the firmware for my chipset ect.....i dont know what could be causing this, anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Shmuckety]

Is it a name brand drive or is it an aftermarket enclosure.

 

[coneyparleg]

Sounds like a similar problem to mine

HHEELLPPP

I have a 200 gig maxtor hard drive which is inside a seperately purchased CompUSA encolsure. I have it formated FAT32. every PC I connect this to recognizes it, however my PS3 tells me "Unknown USB Device"

It is formated exactly how I am told it should be. I can't figure out what the deal is. Please help.

 

[Silent.Sin]

To OP, sounds like it could be a case of the dreaded "Delayed Write Failed" error that nobody seems to have a solid fix for. Search for that topic in the storage forum for some additional info on it. I have run into this really really odd problem(seems to happen at random, even when I'm not accessing files on the device) with my 250GB WD drive in an external enclosure as well. Whenever I get the error the drive is no longer recognized as a storage device, just an unkown USB device. If you have balloon tips turned off in your registry, turn it back on and if the Delayed Write Error is the culprit than you should get notification of it. If it isn't a delayed write thing then it may just be a case of a crappy controller chip in the enclosure that's spazzing out.

I've done some pretty extensive research into the delayed write error (fatwallet has a massive thread about enclosures that you can find linked in these forums, unfortunately it is not very searchable) to see if there was a way out of it without buying a new enclosure but haven't been able to solve it on my system. Some people have managed to work around it by turning off write caching(see the device properties for your external HD) and changing their system's processor and memory scheduling options (see performance settings in the advanced tab of your System Properties).