XP Home ignoring external 1394 drive

[CuRoi]

Several months ago I bought a 300GB WD external HDD for backup. Having the choice of USB 2.0 or Firewire for the connection, I chose the latter. All went well.

Then, a couple of months ago, Win XP (Home) started acting coy about recognizing the external drive. It doesn't seem to matter whether I power it on before or after booting XP. Sometimes XP knows the drive is there; other times it doesn't (or at least pretends that it doesn't): Win Explorer doesn't show the drive, nor can I find it via Hardware Manager (though the latter tells me that the 1394 connection is working). "Scan for new hardware" does nothing.

The only solution I've found is to power the drive on and off until Windows notices it. It generally takes two or three attempts before it shows up in Win Explorer. After that I have no problems with it until I start everything up the next morning.

The on/off routine in itself is only a minor annoyance, but I'm worried that it may be stressing the drive. Can anyone suggest a better way to try to get Windows to notice the drive? Or (dare I hope) to eliminate this problem altogether?

CuRoi

[GaryRouth]

Hi CuRoi

Why not try things with the USB 2.0 connector [not that anything's guaranteed to be better, but at least when it works you'll get a faster throughput speed -- the firewire version on your Western digital has a max transfer rate of 400 Mbits, while the USB 2.0 max transfer is 480 Mbits -- in the real world, I'm not sure you'll notice any difference].

Whether plugged in via FireWire or USB 2.0, Western Digital seems to think that it's best to power on your PC, let Windows load, power on the external & let it spin up, then connect the data cable. They also want you to use the "Stop & Eject Hardware" icon (their way of referring to the Safely Remove Hardware, I'd imagine) when disconnecting it -- http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....i=&p_topview=1

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[CuRoi]

Thanks Gary; maybe I'll try the USB2.0 mode. This morning it came up without any problem.

The method in your second paragraph, when I checked the link, seemed to be about how to connect the external drive for the first time, but I'm a newbie where external drives are concerned, so I may be naively confused. I assumed that, once I got it set up correctly, I could just leave it connected to the computer and turn it off and on at need, as I do with other peripherals. If I have to disconnect the data cable every time I turn the drive off and reconnect the cable every time I turn it on, it's considerably less convenient than the advertising made it sound.

I don't mind connecting my digital camera that way, but for a drive that I keep next to the computer (though it's external, I don't move it around) and want to use almost every day, it's a bit of a drag to have to keep plugging and unplugging the cable. (If it's really necessary to do that, they might have put the cable jacks on the front instead of the back.)

Ah well, many people have bigger problems, so I'll stop complaining now.

Thanks again,
CuRoi

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

Hopefully someone who has a device like yours will have a tip that helps the connection stay detected each time. I only use the external drives & enclosures when working on repairs, so I don't get the opportunity to see how they behave long-term. I read and re-read that article from Western Digital, and it did seem like it should be referring to the 1st detection - but it didn't specifically say that anywhere (that I noticed).

I've seen mention that the intitial USB or FireWire driver setup and detection can make a big difference in how well an external behaves - so I guess another thing you could try would be to completely remove it (uninstall it's driver in Device Manager), and then set it up again as if it were the first time.

Another driver you can try updating is the host controller on the motherboard for either the USB or FireWire... Theoretically, now and then a more recent driver can make a difference.

A few years ago, I felt that USB wasn't ready for prime-time. In some ways, it's behavior is erratic enough to make me think that this is still the case. Those external drives are premium devices, and really ought to work perfectly right out of the box & everyday after that for their expected usage term. That so many have detection issues - after so many years that these devices have been on the market - is completely frustrating.

Well, at least most of the ethernet-based Network Attached Storage devices work OK. That's a good batting average in baseball, at least

Hope it works better when you try the USB!
. . . Gary

[glc]

In the real world, Firewire is faster than USB 2.0, the advertised speeds are only theoretical maximums. The only issues I've had with Firewire external hard drives stem from problems with the IDE to Firewire card inside the drive, some of those are not ready for prime time. I've had a lot of problems with Prolific 3507 based cards, but Oxford 911's work very well.

[CuRoi]

Well, for the moment I've decided just to keep my fingers crossed. As I mentioned, XP recognized the drive on the first try yesterday morning. Later, while I was looking around the WD support site after checking Gary's link, I tried to read the model number off the back of the drive and (inadvertently and unbeknownst) pulled out the power cable. When I noticed this later, I stuck the cable back in and the drive came up on the Explorer bar right away. (No test this morning, as I leave the computer on every Friday night to run full backups, virus scan, disk defrag, etc. in the wee hours.)

The following factors have also influenced my (non-)decision:

• Though I didn't make this very clear in my initial post, the drive recognition problem began after a few months of trouble-free operation. So the initial setup doesn't seem to have been at fault.
  
• The 1394 port is on the motherboard, so there isn't a card problem.

Right now, it looks as if I may improve my luck a bit by making sure Windows is fully up and has actually done a routine task or two before I power on the WD drive.

CuRoi

[CuRoi]

My little problem returned after a couple of days, but, thanks to you, Gary, I think I may have found a procedure that works. Instead of just shutting down the PC and then the external drive at the end of the day, I do "Safely Remove Hardware," then shut down the drive before the PC. Next morning, I wait until the PC is fully up before I power up the drive, et voila...

So far, switching the drive on and off seems to satisfy the connect/disconnect requirements. The data cable being in or out doesn't seem to matter. (Good; that's harder to reach.)

Before I tried the current procedure, I noticed that, when I started up in the morning, even though I hadn't been able to make the system see the drive, it was on the list of hardware items that came up when I hit the "SRH" icon. Based on your posts, I figured that regularizing that situation might help, and it seems that it did.

(For two days, anyway. Looks good, but this is the Wonderful World of Windows, so we'll see.)

In any event, thanks for the help.

CuRoi

[911c4]

I have had the same problems and come to the same conclusions.
It's good to know that I am not the only one with the problem!