External HDD/USB problems

[Graham.J]

I'm somewhat baffled.

About an hour ago now, I moved some files from my main hard drive over to my backup, external hard drive. I removed the hardware properly, turned it off and unplugged it from the PC.

I've just wanted to have another look at the file and plugged the HDD back into the USB port I'd just taken it out of and it threw up a message telling me to install the hardware etc.

I've downloaded the driver for it and installed it again, just to make sure...but still no luck.

Usually when a USB device connects I get a "bu-dum" noise, the same in reverse when removing. However, now I'm getting "bu-dum..dududu" which is rather strange.

Any ideas?

Oh and I'm running XP Pro and it's a LaCie Big Disk 500gb.

Thanks all in advance

Graham

[bigdods]

Hmm, Now I have seen something similar recently with an old scanner. First installed on USB, worked a treat. Unplugged and used on another machine. Still ok. Plugged back into first machine and it re-installed the driver (oh thats weird thinks me at the time) but the scanner refused to start up.

Finally worked out that it would only work if plugged back into the same USB port it was originally connected to when first installed. The PC had 4 on the front panel and I was just plugging it into a random one each time.

Worth eliminating anyway....

[Graham.J]

Hmm that is strange, I used exactly the same port as it came from - I only have two ports on the front and one doesn't work.

[ThePassenger]

Graham.J said:

Hmm that is strange, I used exactly the same port as it came from - I only have two ports on the front and one doesn't work.

What OS and service pack levle? (i.e. XP SP2). And why doesn't one of the ports work? Are they say one on top of the other/next to each other or do they have a space in between them?

Have you got another USB device kicking around (printer, scanner, ipod, USB stick) you could try attaching, if so does that work?

[Graham.J]

ThePassenger said:

Graham.J said:

Hmm that is strange, I used exactly the same port as it came from - I only have two ports on the front and one doesn't work.

What OS and service pack levle? (i.e. XP SP2). And why doesn't one of the ports work? Are they say one on top of the other/next to each other or do they have a space in between them?

Have you got another USB device kicking around (printer, scanner, ipod, USB stick) you could try attaching, if so does that work?

Okay...I have XP Pro on SP2. One of the ports never works, just throws up errors. I put a thread up about it a while ago and have subsequently got a new USB PCI card to get more ports. They're on top of one another, top works, bottom doesn't.

I have plenty of USB devices, I'll give one a go now...

...yup, that works fine with my phone plugged in.

[beanbag]

You shouldn't need drivers for a USB hard disk. It should come up as a USB Mass Storage Device under XP SP2.

I know this sounds daft, but a similar thing happened to me with a card reader. I changed the USB cable and voila it worked. You can also check this before buying a new USB cable by installing the drive on another PC.

[Graham.J]

That sounds promising. I'll have to wait til the weekend though as I can't get hold of another computer until then.

Thanks very much