Wd Passport Not Detected

[nb-]

I have several Western Digital Passport drives, and they are not being detected on a windows server 2003 system. I plug them in and nothing happens. They are being plugged into a USB 1 port, not a USB 2 port, however they had been working fine.

Flash sticks (USB 2) work fine on the port, and the WD drives work fine on my windows XP desktop.

Any ideas on what is causing this and how to get them going again?

 

[sondo2121]

Sorry if this is known to you already:

Try going into computer management either by right clicking on My Computer >> Manage or my typing compmgmt.msc into the run dialog box.

Click on the disk management tab to view all disks the computer "sees"

if you see the drive there, right click on it and "Change Drive Letters"

Click change and select a new letter to represent the drive.


See if the drive has shown up in My computer. You may have to wait about 10-30 seconds.

Let me know if this helps, or if you have tried this before.

 

[spotpuff]

+1 on the computer management/disk management option.

You also need to format the drive IIRC to NTFS (or whatever); quick format is fine since you aren't erasing anything (should take only a few seconds). You should be good to go after that.

 

[nb-]

Thanks sondo2121, I have tried that, and searching for new plug and play devices, just about everything I could think of, no luck.

& thanks spotpuff, but the drives are formated etc.

I am sure this has happened before.

I have installed a USB 2 card, and the drives seem to be working fine on that, as well as back on the USB 1 port, it could just have been the reboot, but I didnt want to take the box down unnecessarily.

I am wondering if its people just removing the drives without stopping them which could be causing it? Any other ideas of causes or solutions?

 

[sondo2121]

I am wondering if its people just removing the drives without stopping them which could be causing it?

It could be, although I have never had an issue w/o disabling them before removing them. Macs and *NIX machines do although.

Thats a weird issue, If I get some intuition il let yah know.