USB External Hard Disk Drive Disappears

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.setup (More info?)

I have 2 separate instances of this:

I have purchased and setup External USB 2.0 Hard Disk drives for server
backups. I have configured Microsoft Backup the way I want it.

The problem is, within 2 days, the external hard disk drive disappears from
Windows Explorer! I can unplug it and plug it back in to get it to reappear,
but obviously that isn't acceptable.

Does anyone know why my External Hard Disk Drives keep disappearing? Please
help!

p

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.setup (More info?)

PJM wrote:
> *I have 2 separate instances of this:
>
> I have purchased and setup External USB 2.0 Hard Disk drives for
> server
> backups. I have configured Microsoft Backup the way I want it.
>
> The problem is, within 2 days, the external hard disk drive
> disappears from
> Windows Explorer! I can unplug it and plug it back in to get it to
> reappear,
> but obviously that isn't acceptable.
>
> Does anyone know why my External Hard Disk Drives keep disappearing?
> Please
> help!
>
> p *

Same thing is happening to me!!! I cannot figure this out for the life
of me!!!

I'm running Server 2003 and have a WD 120GB external. 2003 recognizes
the HD but it does not show in explorer.

Can anyone help us!?



--
baby_gravey
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[GeoffW]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.setup (More info?)

"baby_gravey" <baby_gravey.1ffzpy@mail.mcse.ms> wrote in
message news:baby_gravey.1ffzpy@mail.mcse.ms...
>
> PJM wrote:
> > *I have 2 separate instances of this:
> >
> > I have purchased and setup External USB 2.0 Hard Disk
drives for
> > server
> > backups. I have configured Microsoft Backup the way I
want it.
> >
> > The problem is, within 2 days, the external hard disk
drive
> > disappears from
> > Windows Explorer! I can unplug it and plug it back in
to get it to
> > reappear,
> > but obviously that isn't acceptable.
> >
> > Does anyone know why my External Hard Disk Drives keep
disappearing?
> > Please
> > help!
> >
> > p *
>
> Same thing is happening to me!!! I cannot figure this out
for the life
> of me!!!
>
> I'm running Server 2003 and have a WD 120GB external.
2003 recognizes
> the HD but it does not show in explorer.
>
> Can anyone help us!?

there isn't a power saving power/off power/down setting in
the Bios ? or within the OS that would cause this ?

just an idea

Geoff
>
>
>
> --
> baby_gravey
> ----------------------------------------------------------
--------------
> Posted via http://www.mcse.ms
> ----------------------------------------------------------
--------------
> View this thread: http://www.mcse.ms/message1140328.html
>

 

[c j]

If your drive is just not showing up in my computer then you either don't have a partition on the drive, the drive needs to be brought online via disk management, or your system is trying to assign a drive letter to a local drive that has already been assigned to a mapped network drive.

My problem and the problem of the original poster is that the drive can be recognized and then out of the blue disappear from the system. If you unplug the device and plug it back in everything seems fine and eventually you will be going through the same thing over and over again.

I have been running a series of NT backups on a Server 2003 box for several months now. All of the sudden my backups would fail and my backup log would say that the data on the source drive was unreadable and may be corrupted. It also continued to say that the source and destination drive were no longer accessible. I know the source drive was accessible or the system would have crashed. I checked the files my backup log was referring to and they were there and not corrupted. 90% of the time the backup would fail on the 79th directory. There is never a entry in event viewer around this time that would indicate a possible problem. Western Digital Diagnostics pass on the quick test and fail just seconds into the extended test claiming there are to many bad sectors. All 5 of the drives failed this test on the server. However, when tested on another machine with the same software they all test fine. Running windows check disk causes the drive to disappear from the system or causes explorer.exe to crash and restart. I have been going around and around with this for 72 hours now and haven't got any farther. I am using a program called USBTrace that analyzes the communications in and out of usb devices. This hasn't proved to be helpful either. The odd thing is that if I plug in a my book which uses external power it works perferctly. It's just the WD passports that are failing. To make situations even weirder is that I have the exact same server hardware platform setup else where using the same type drives and it works flawlessly. The one that fails is running SBS 2003 SP2 the other is just Server 2003. Don't know if this has anything to do with it or not. I have disabled all software that might access the drive and this didn't help either. At his point I am baffled and would really like to see someone reply to posting.

 

[c j]

To follow up. Just a short time ago while analyzing the USB traffic the drives disappeared. This time they are not coming back. I tried other usb devices and they didn't work either. It definitely seems to be a motherboard issue. But unless the usb controller dies completely it's going to be difficult convincing the manufacturer to replace the board.

 

[c j]

So last night I tried to restart the server in question but it never completed the process. This morning I performed a hard reboot and windows will not load. It just sets at the windows 2003 splash screen and continuously runs the little bar at the bottom. So I failed the server over to the backup. We use doubletake so it replicates everything about the server but the USB is working on the backup server with no problem. I turned off the faulty server and plugged in a flash drive. When a usb device is plugged in during post the on board speaker beeps for each device it finds. Well it found my flash drive. I am currently running a platform confidence test. The quick test past so I'm running the extended test. I will post the results when it concludes. After which I will boot the system to a customer PE environment I compiled and I will try to access my USB device to see if I can get the problem to reoccur outside of windows.

 

[c j]

Well, I guess I have some bad news. All of my diagnostics passed the usb and motherboard tests. It is definitely not behaving the same as it did in windows. So I guess I get to troubleshoot Server 2003 to find out what changed or became corrupted. I have already ran driver grabber to round up all of the drivers being used for usb and now I have to get the files being used by windows to provide removable usb media functionality. I will follow up on this a little later.

 

[Guest]

Well, I guess I have some bad news. All of my diagnostics passed the usb and motherboard tests. It is definitely not behaving the same as it did in windows. So I guess I get to troubleshoot Server 2003 to find out what changed or became corrupted. I have already ran driver grabber to round up all of the drivers being used for usb and now I have to get the files being used by windows to provide removable usb media functionality. I will follow up on this a little later.

Any update on this?

I have many SBS 2003 server running HP Proliant ML350 with usb backups.
Some break the drives
Some lock up
Others run flawless!

I changed drive manufacturers and it seems to solve the problem for a few weeks then the problems come back.

The servers are all the same driver level, hardware and firmware level and windows update level. This is driving me bonkers.

 

[Kafeine]

Any update on this?

I have many SBS 2003 server running HP Proliant ML350 with usb backups.
Some break the drives
Some lock up
Others run flawless!

I changed drive manufacturers and it seems to solve the problem for a few weeks then the problems come back.

The servers are all the same driver level, hardware and firmware level and windows update level. This is driving me bonkers.

Go in the Disk Manager, ensure he is not hidding under the same Letter than a Network Share (G,H (??) )
If so...right click on it and change Letter.

 

[Guest]

This topic has been closed by Grumpy9117