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General discussion

External Encloshure 160gB disappeare after I restart my comp

Mar 20, 2005 8:19AM PST

Hi everyone!
My comp Pentium 3, 600mgz, 256 RAM, Windows XP Pro.
I have my External Enclosure (support USB 1.1, 2.0; Firewire 1394A, 1394B) with 160gB inside. I use 1394A connection, have installed on my comp PCI card 1394A.
Everything works perfect until I have to restart the computer. After restart, my external drive (which is connected all the time and is "ON" permanently) disappear and to let the computer "find" it again I have to disconnect cable for a second or turn my external drive "OFF" and then back on. Right after that my comp behave normally - showing "safely remove hardware" sing on the toolbar and everything is fine until the next restart. The problem doesn't seem to be big, but I wonder if anything possible could be done to prevent unplugging.
Thanks for your help in advance

Discussion is locked

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Just discussed in the XP forum.
Mar 20, 2005 8:21AM PST

That is not a stable setup from my experience and I know of NO CURE except to connect it to USB 2.0 on XP SP2.

Best of luck,

Bob

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I spent a bit of time and now everything is just fine
Mar 20, 2005 12:34PM PST

Thanks for your reply, Sir!
I did some experiments on my comp and found something. In case of Firewire 1394A before restarting comp we have to click on toolbar's icon "Safely Remove Hardware" and stop it. To do this Windows Explorer has to be closed too, otherwise comes up message that windows can't stop hardware... Then the comp could be restarted with no problem and external hard disk will be at it's place when windows is up. The menu option Policies which is under properties of hard disk, has two options - the top one "Optimize for quick removal" disables write cashing and allows to remove hardware without using option from toolbar "Safely remove hardware". It doesn't work for Firewire 1394A, we have to use this option "safely remove hardware" anyway in case of Firewire. It works for USB1.1. I don't have USB2.0, so I didn't have chance to check
Another thing I found (I speak about Firewire 1394A) - if we restart comp without using option "Safely remove Hardware" and after restart our external drive disappear, then another restart will return it to it's place.
Thanks to everyone who read it Happy

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You've proven they need to work on the software.
Mar 20, 2005 7:53PM PST

Definately looks buggy to me. Hope you have a backup since what I often read next is the drive's data vanished.

Bob