USB hard drive disappeared!

[kmullinax]

I have a Toshiba 400gb external USB hard drive that I've used for the past year as a backup drive. It was working perfectly attached to my Windows 7 x64 system - then I had a system crash - and now the drive is no longer detected.
When I plug it into any of the (6) USB ports on my computer, absolutely nothing happens, though the device is receiving power. I have even looked via Disk Management at the available drives and nothing shows up.
I have tested the ports with other hardware and there is nothing wrong with the USB ports. I have all of the current drivers for the USB controllers. I have also successfully connected to the hard drive both on my laptop in Windows Vista and to my workstation at my office which is running Windows 7.

So the problem is not with the USB ports, it's not with the drivers, and it's not with the hard drive itself... it has something to do with the fact that when my computer crashed it must not have released the system resources for that drive or something. I have tried installing the Win7 / Nvidia hotfix with no success.
The frustrating thing here is that it worked just fine for months on the system prior to the crash!!

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Welcome!

First, could you please tell us a little more about your crash? What happened, and what did you do to fix it?

You may see if doing a system restore helps.

You may also consider doing a repair install.

Good luck!

~JK

 

[kmullinax]

I wish I knew.
The PC is a media center so it stays on all the time. It has crashed a few times over the last several months. At first I thought it might be overheating, but I haven't found any unusually high temps when I've put it through the tests, so I'm thinking the "crashes" are due to short power outages or fluctuations in our neighborhood during the winter. I don't have the system attached to a battery backup.
The only reason I know that it crashed is because it will be powered off when I get home.
I had the Toshiba drive connected directly to the computer for regular backups. I would do a system restore, but the problem is I have no idea when this happened. It might have vanished from system visibility a couple months ago for all I know.

I might have to do a repair install. I was hoping that it might be as simple as a registry hack or something.

 

[MadMaxData]

Does the drive show up in your BIOS?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Check your C:\Windows\Minidump folder and see if there are any dmp files. If so, could you please place them in a zip or rar folder and upload it to this site?

http://www.sevenforums.com/crash-lockup-debug-how/34900-1-novice-how-ask-help-bsod-problem.html

I'm wondering if you are having BSODs.

 

[Bill2]

In Device Manager, expand the USB list. Does your drive show up?

 

[kmullinax]

MadMax: It seems that the BIOS does not detect it...? At least it looks that way. Under USB configuration in the BIOS, it tells me I have a USB mouse and keyboard connected, but it mentions no other devices. All of the ports are enabled though, as is 2.0 and legacy support.

Bill2: No it does not show up in the device manager under the USB controllers

Johnathan_King: Apparently W7 is not saving my dumps - I have no minidump folder at all. Hm.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Make sure Windows is set to create a small memory dump.

View attachment 62555

 

[Mikethomas]

Try easeas partition manager it may show up in tha
I use it all the time and is great showed me parts
that others didn't show me
give it a try

 

[r3r3]

same problem..

My hdd was running well at the beginning then one time it desappeared.. win7 does not see it.
partition manager (like partition magic) does see it !!
When i try with my other win XP laptop, it's working fine.
I was thinking of wating for the sp1 release to get it fix..

 

[Nandhini]

Hi,
My Os is XP. could someone please help me with this issue?
When my machine was waked up from standby I found my wireless network was not connected. And I also found that wireless adapter was missing from my network connections window.
After I did a reboot of my laptop, wireless adpater was back in network connections.But wireless network was not connected and I found that Power management tab was missing under device manager tab of wireless adapter. I understood that this is in someway related to S3 issue, but not sure how to get my network back.
Kindly help me in resolving this issue.
Thanks in advance.