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#1
Portable USB drive not working. Please help!
A long while ago I purchased a Western Digital MyBook USB hard drive that required a power source from a wall outlet. After working for two years it failed. The computer I ran it on was Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I plugged it into my Father's Windows Vista 32-bit machine and it showed up right away. I thought maybe there was a problem with that drive on Windows 7, plus I was tired of the AC adapter, so I bought a 500GB portable Toshiba hard drive..
I plugged it into the same machine my old one died on, and it would appear for a short while, and then disappear. Then re-appear, and disappear again. All while making that USB "Bee-boop" noise. Like it was going crazy. I've tried different cables, and I've tried all available ports. I've tested it on my Father's Vista machine, and it worked there. Now I was wondering if it was just my motherboard gone bad. I decided to build a new computer. I installed all the drivers for everything and then plugged the USB hard drive in. (Into ports that OTHER devices are working on). The drive powers up and the activity light flashes for about one second, and then turns off. The drive still spins, but the light goes off. And Windows acts like nothing ever happened. After unplugging it and re-plugging it back in to different ports, my computer actually just instantly restarts.
It can't be a bad drive, because it works on other machines. My copy of Windows hasn't even been installed for 24 hours yet, and it's already not working. After trying over 50 times, ONCE the activity light actually stayed on and the drive appeared and I was able to browse. This is great, (but it fell from my lap, unplugged, and restarted the PC). Even still, I don't want to recover my data, I just want to USE the drive I paid for.
Any ideas?