USB 2.0 hard drive not recognized after restart

[KYT]

I just bought a 30GB USB 2.0 hard drive. It works well when I plug it in. But when I restart Window XP a drive letter cannot be assigned to it although it can be detected in Disk Management (marked as uninitialized). I have to unplug and then plug it in again to let XP assign a drive letter to it. This problem makes it impossible to backup my system using Ghost 2003 which requires restarting XP before writing on the drive. :knock: (I suspect this is due to some security setting from Windows Update because my old external hard disk doesn't have the this problem)
Can anyone help me on this?

 

[DelJo63]

power off system, plug in the USB drive and power up.

net use the Admin Disk Manager to see the partition in the lower pane
and the data (if any) in the upper pane.

sounds like the partition table is gone

 

[KYT]

I tried to re-format it to FAT32 or NTFS, but the problem persists. An interesting thing is that after restart, Disk Management recognize the disk as un-initiated but Partition Magic cannot find it. After unplug and re-plug, the hard drive works perfectly fine and Partition Magic finds it again!

 

[DelJo63]

if it's really ok, then mounting it at boot time should ALWAYS work.

btw: make sure you use the Disconnect tool in the Launch Pad to stop data
traffic before you just yank-out the cable; without this tool, you can corrupt
the filesystem on the USB drive

 

[KYT]

I have tried again but futile. It is strange that when I plugged the same disk to another PC with XP, it was recognized after restart! So it must be something wrong with my PC setting. I guess it may be due to the Windows updates......is it possible to remove these updates? (actually the performance of my XP declines after installing these updates, esp the IE.) :dead:

 

[danielb]

Go to add/remove programs in control panel and tick the updates box. A huge list will appear.

 

[DelJo63]

I have tried again but futile. It is strange that when I plugged the same disk to another PC with XP, it was recognized after restart! So it must be something wrong with my PC setting. I guess it may be due to the Windows updates......is it possible to remove these updates? (actually the performance of my XP declines after installing these updates, esp the IE.) :dead:

haven't found the combination myself, but SOMETIMES i've seen USB devices are only
found (and Flash Drive is treated as an HD) and get mounted ONLY at boot time.
If you're on an Admin account, it should automount any time they're inserted.

 

[KYT]

Now I know the problem is probably due to the enclosure (a cheap OEM stuff) which is not completely compatible with the 2.5' hard disk so that there is connection problem with some computers. In the worst case it is not recognized at all by some computers. It seems the safest way is to buy alerady-assebled, branded external hard disk to guranteen sucessful read/write in most if not all computers.