Portable Hard Drive Problems

[Debacle]

Have a Seagate 500gb IDE drive in an external case which used to work but have tried to get it going after sitting idle for a while and windows will not recognize it. Comes up in device manager as unknown device. Have tried in a different external case, same thing. Have tried running through a powered usb hub, same thing. Have tried installing the drive back into the computer case and its fine.

What could be causing xp to not want to recognize the external drive ???

I am pretty sure I have seen a similar thread on here a while ago but cant find it.

[McDisco]

Have you checked the Seagate website for FAQs? My Western Digital just went down also, but it has lost its formatting somehow...we now have to send it away to get the data recovered. I found out from the WD website how to diagnose the problem.

Angus

[HangOver]

try connecting the drive staight into the USB port not via a hub.

I had a simmilar issue with a HDD worked for months then it just stopped working. Pluged it straight into tthe USB drive and it worked fine.