External USB Hard Drive Problems

[Beginning]

I have Windows XP and Linux dual booted. My External 400gig Hard drive in it's own case that's plugged into a USB slot on the back of my computer. It is formatted fat23. It can be seen and written to in both XP and Linux no problem. I installed the earlier Windows 7 build a while back and couldn't see the files on it. It said it was empty. Well I thought maybe they didn't have that sorted out yet.. But now even with the Beta 1 installed, it still says it's empty. I know for fact it's not. Anyone with some ideas?

 

[johngalt]

It might be a driver issue with Windows 7 and external USB drives....

Someone else actually asked about that a while ago as well, take a look in the drivers forum.

 

[Beginning]

Ok... I booted to XP and found somewhere to store all the files on the USB External Drive. Then formatted it NTFS and transferred all the files back onto it. So now Windows 7 will see the drive and it's folders but not the files inside the folders. Grrrrrr...

 

[limneos]

Man , that's really weird. I'd still agree with johngalt about the driver issue.

What is you motherboard brand/model? Have you installed all drivers found by windows update, or manually installed the chipset driver?

 

[Anthony]

Yes install chipset drivers first then test,
If that fails do this tutorial:-Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable
log into the admin account..... if you still cant access the drive it is a driver issue.

 

[Beginning]

Th computer I have is rather old say 5 years, It uses nforce2 chipset.. I couldn't find anynewer drives then 2004....... Sucks to be me I guess. Anyway I finally just removed it from the external case and installed it inside my computer. Now it works fine... Like you're saying it's probably a driver issue.. Thanks people for the help... Cheers!

 

[bluegween]

External Hardrive suddenly stops working

i am encountering the same problem.
i am using Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM.
i have a Western Digital MyBook Essential 1TB and a Western Digital MyPassport 120GB.

both of them are detected at first.
when i try to copy files from 1TB to my 120GB, it suddenly stops or does not respond.
until when i got o Device Manager and it now displays it is an Unknown Device.
my only way to get them detected again is to do a restart.

but same problem wil occur when i try to copy files again.
i hopes this gets reported to Windows 7 team

i already tried to update my mobo bios and tried to reinstal USB root hub drivers but same problem.'
my machine is Acer M5640

any more ideas?


Note: this problem does not occur when i was using Vista Ultimate x64

 

[Major Blud]

Same Issue

I'm having this same exact issue. Inserting a USB flash drive works fine, but once I start copying files over to it, it will stop after about a minute, and then vanish. Device Manager shows an "Unknown Device". Same thing happens when trying to sync my iPhone. These devices worked fine when I was using Vista Ultimate x86.

I was able to get around it by installing an NEC USB PCI expansion card, and not using the builtin USB ports on my motherboard (Biostar GF7050V-M7). This fixes it, but I had to remove my gigabit ethernet card to make room for the USB card. I have a feeling that the default drivers for the USB controllers don't work well with the USB chipset on my motherboard (which appears to be an Nvidia nForce, not 100% certain). I've tried installing nForce drivers straight from Nvidia but this didn't help.

I hope we can keep this thread alive until someone finds a more solid solution.

 

[fendytan]

My system is Acer M5641 (nforce too)... and yes, I have the same issue like bluegween and major blud

 

[slashem]

USB storage devices are messed up on M5641

Hi!

I have an Acer M5641 too and the same problem. I've found several other threads on various forums with M5641 owners having problems with USB storage devices. A partial solution that stops my 2 WD MyBook 1TB's from crashing is setting them in performance mode. Safe mode seems to be default. This allows me to copy to and from them from a regular SATA drive. However, when transferring to or from a USB-stick it crashes after about 30 seconds. Sometimes the USB gets messed up requiring a reboot and other times it BSOD's. Anyone tried 64-bit linux?

 

[Colin]

Acer Aspire M5641

I have an Acer Aspire M5641, and also have the exact same issue with USB storage devices with Windows 7 64bit RTM. I emailed Acer to see if there were new drivers to address this issue. Unfortunately they did give me an answer in regards to drivers just told me they were not to be held responsible for me changing the operating system on the PC. Their response seemed awfully defensive when all I wanted to know was if they had some more up to date drivers available. Anyone know of any drivers that may address this issue?

 

[Colin]

USed the same work around as Major Blud, thanks for the idea in your post. Dropped a PCI USB 2 card in today put all my usb harddrives on it and no more problems. Seems liek a good solution for $15 until the driver issues are resolved.

 

[Major Blud]

Yeah, it's working out OK since I did that too....bummer I didn't have enough slots for my gigabit NIC, but I remembered that I have a PCI Express 1x slot that wasn't being used, so I ordered a gigabit NIC for that

 

[Major Blud]

Possible Solution

I installed the latest Windows 7 64-bit version of the nForce 610i drivers from Nvidia's website, and I think it may have fixed the issue for me. Has anyone else tried this?

 

[Major Blud]

Not even 30 seconds after posting this it stopped working

Sorry to get everyone's hopes up.

 

[slashem]

Win 7 64-bit audio driver is up in Acer's driver section. I'm guessing it's the chipset driver we need.

 

[slashem]

Nvidia has new drivers for nforce up to, added 2009-10-01. Will try them out asap.

Edit 1: Still crashes. I've owned 2 Acer systems and both of them has had weird problems with compatability and no helpfull response from Acer.

Edit 2: Ordered a PCI USB-card. It will hopefully arrive tomorrow and solve my problems. Still, feels a bit like a defeat

 

[Erumaro]

Been having these problems ever since i installed win7. Tried a lot of things, but it just doesnt seem to work

Anyone tried contacting Microsoft about this, since this problem seems to affect loads of people?

 

[vvinjj]

I solved this problem like this:
1. Disconnect all USB cables from laptop & restart Win7;
2. ShutDown Computer after restart;
3. Disconnect power AC cable from external hard drive;
4. TurnOn Computer
5. Win7 will recognize your external hard drive and advice to Scan&Fix it.
6. Click Scan&Fix (quick one).

I think that this kind of problem is related not only to external hard drives, but also for many hardware devices which are connected to USB slots of laptop.
The reason is that Laptop USB power is limited and devices stop work properly because of number of reasons (long cables (6m), many devices, bad connections e.t.c);
In this case WinXP needs just to restart and it works fine again. But Win7 has some problem with process terminating.
For example, when something is unsuccessful - it's impossible to end that process in task manager and to terminate this process Win7 has to be restarted. In evidence of that problem (process termination) the Computer Management (including Device Manager, Storage e.t.c) freezes. And probably on this stage of freezing some mistakes appear on that hard drive which becomes to work inappropriately until power disconnecting. And from this stage windows unable to recognise the device, because the device is working inappropriate.

Sources and Evidences of problem:
1. Insufficient amount of USB power
2. Win7 process terminating problem (freeze)
3. Making a mistake on USB HDD
4. Unable to recognise USB HDD because of inappropriate work util power off HDD

Well, it is just my theory and if I'm not right- please, let me know because it is interesting (why Microsoft didn't recognize that problem).
But, anyway I think Microsoft should fix the Win7 Process Terminating problem (in Task Manager).

 

[Major Blud]

Although this may have fixed the issue in your particular scenario, I don't think that power is the root cause of the problem, and here's why:

1) The problem isn't isolated to laptops (I have a desktop with a 750 WT PSU).
2) I didn't have this problem with 32-bit Vista, and I haven't seen anyone on here state that they are seeing the issue with 32-bit Windows 7....it appears to be solely x64.
3) I don't have the problem when using a PCI USB card that isnt' being controlled by the Nvidia chipset. If it were a power issue, I'd be having the problem with this card also. (?)
4) I've tried all the steps in your post to no avail.

I really feel that this is driver issue.....if it wasn't we'd be seeing a lot more people having this problem.....so far it only appears to be people with Nvidia chipsets and Windows 7 x64. If it were being caused by lack of power, I'd imagine that this would be a lot more common place.