From: "Brian Walters"
On Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:56 -0400, "John Sessoms" <jsessoms...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
From: "Brian Walters"
G'day all
For several months one of my external hard drives has been acting a bit
'flaky'.
The drive is permanently attached to the PC but when the computer boots
there is no sign of the drive in Windows Explorer. However, after about
10-15 minutes, the autoplay window magically appears and the operating
system reads the drive, which then becomes available. The drive
continues to work properly thereafter - until the next boot when the
process starts over again.
My question is whether the hard disk itself is on the way to hard disk
hell or whether the drive controller is likely to be the culprit. Or
could it be a faulty USB cable? Would it be worth extracting the drive
from its case and try installing it in a new case? The drive is about
three and a half years old.
Note that I'm not relying on this drive as a primary back up any more,
but it is convenient if it keeps working. And I'm just curious as to
why the drive would be behaving like this.
Is this perchance a Western Digital MyBook external drive?
Perchance, it is. A My Book 500GB.
What you're seeing may just be part of the nature of the WD MyBook,
although I expect the power transformer (wall wart) is getting close to
failure.
I think all WD MyBooks have inadequate power transformers.
I have two of the WD MyBooks (320GB & 500GB) and both of them exhibit
the same symptoms you describe. When you hook them up they appear dead,
but if you leave them attached long enough they'll eventually show up.
The 320GB got to the point where it would never start, until I
inadvertently hooked it to the power supply for the other one and it
started working again. I replaced that transformer and now they both work.
Or at least work in the fashion of WD MyBooks.
If you need it *right now*, you should have plugged it in half an hour ago.
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