external usb drive problem
 

Hello everybody. New member here at the forums.

I am having a problem with an external USB drive. I recently bought a Western Digital SE16 7200 RPM 320gig SATA hard drive. I purchased a CompUSA enclosure (for lack of finding any other brand in 5 different stores I visited) for the drive and a PCMCIA card that has USB 2.0 slots (my laptop doesn't have any). My problem is that I can only access my drive for about 5 to 10 minutes before my computer locks up. The LED light that tells me that my external drive is being access stays red constantly. The only remedy to this is to unplug the USB cable, then my computer starts working again. I have to restart my computer and restart the drive and try again only to get locked up again 10 minute later. Can anybody give me any ideas on where my problem is (the drive, case, PCMCIA card, or even the laptop)? Thanks; any help is appreciated.

Which operating system are you using.

Just a couple of things I can think of

1. Driver problems, try reinstalling the drivers.

2. Have heard about software problems with backup software Storage Sync.

3. Instead of Storage Sync try using Windows backup utility.

I'm using Service Pack 2 of XP Professional.

As far as the Drivers, someone else suggested the same thing on another forum. I went to the Sabrent website (the maker of the PC card) and download and installed the drivers. I think that made it worse, because now I can't access the drive at all. I heard the little "ding" that tells me I plugged something in, but the drive doesn't show up in My Computer. But when I plug it into the back USB ports (the 1.1's that were on the laptop initially) it works right away.

As far as backup software, I'm not using any. Just copy and pasting.

Thanks.

Try these steps from Windows Knowledge Base article.

When you install Windows XP Service Pack 2, the USB 2.0 drivers do not appear to update

Also if you have Anitvirus software try disabling it and test if the drive works fine or not.

Thank you for your suggestion, but it didn't help any.

Just for completness sake, I think I've narrowed down the problem a bit further. I learned that I can copy to the drive with no problem, but as soon as the copying is done, the laptop locks up and when I remove the cable, I get a "Delayed write failure" error message. I tried duplicating everything using the laptop's 1.1 usb ports, but I didn't get any error messages. worked fine...