[SOLVED] USB HDD problems

huxley2112 · 08-24-2007, 12:12 AM

First post here, and I wanted to say that there is a wealth of information here. I will have to dig through and see if I can help anyone with any problems, but first I will post my insane problem I am having:

I have two external USB hard drives: a WD 120 gig and a simpletec 320 gig drive. Both worked fine for a few months, but then I began having problems with both drives at the same time. They would each be found by XP, but they were unaccessable because of a "I/O error". After trying everything I know (and messing up my XP build), I finally came to my wits end and decided it was time to upgrade to Vista ultimate anyway.

I did a completely clean install of Vista (new partition and everything) on the system, and was able to access the drives again... for a while. Vista found the drives just fine, but when I would try to copy files off of them onto a local drive, I would get another "I/O device error" message. Here is the part that baffles me: I am able to boot into safe mode on vista and copy the files off of each USB drive onto my local drive just fine.

Also, when I boot Vista (not in safe mode) with the USB drives turned on, it takes about 10 minutes for vista to boot, then it is very unstable once it does. Every other USB device I have works just fine: Digital camera, printer, DVD+DL drive & mouse. This leads me to believe it is not a hardware problem with my machine.

What would cause these drives to not work normally, but just fine in safe mode? Why am I having problems with them under two different OS's? It is not the drives, as I have tried them on friend's computers and they work fine on theirs. Anyone have any ideas, because I am fresh out! My next idea is to buy a PCI USB adapter card and plug the drives into that, but I really don't think it is a USB hardware problem.

Anyone had a simliar problem? I'm soon to bust the drives out of the USB enclosures and plug them into my machine via IDE, and I don't want to resort to that!

Here is are my machine specs:

Gigabyte GA-KAVM800M (rev 2.0) Mobo
AMD Sempron 2600+
1 Gig RAM
WD 320 Gig SATA HD
Radeon 9200se vid card
Vista Ultimate
Mcafee AV

huxley2112 · 08-24-2007, 04:15 PM

This issue was solved by adding a pci USB adapter. Plugged both external drives into that and they work fine now.

08-24-2007, 12:12 AM	#1 (permalink)
huxley2112 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 2 OS: Vista Ultimate	[SOLVED] USB HDD problems First post here, and I wanted to say that there is a wealth of information here. I will have to dig through and see if I can help anyone with any problems, but first I will post my insane problem I am having: I have two external USB hard drives: a WD 120 gig and a simpletec 320 gig drive. Both worked fine for a few months, but then I began having problems with both drives at the same time. They would each be found by XP, but they were unaccessable because of a "I/O error". After trying everything I know (and messing up my XP build), I finally came to my wits end and decided it was time to upgrade to Vista ultimate anyway. I did a completely clean install of Vista (new partition and everything) on the system, and was able to access the drives again... for a while. Vista found the drives just fine, but when I would try to copy files off of them onto a local drive, I would get another "I/O device error" message. Here is the part that baffles me: I am able to boot into safe mode on vista and copy the files off of each USB drive onto my local drive just fine. Also, when I boot Vista (not in safe mode) with the USB drives turned on, it takes about 10 minutes for vista to boot, then it is very unstable once it does. Every other USB device I have works just fine: Digital camera, printer, DVD+DL drive & mouse. This leads me to believe it is not a hardware problem with my machine. What would cause these drives to not work normally, but just fine in safe mode? Why am I having problems with them under two different OS's? It is not the drives, as I have tried them on friend's computers and they work fine on theirs. Anyone have any ideas, because I am fresh out! My next idea is to buy a PCI USB adapter card and plug the drives into that, but I really don't think it is a USB hardware problem. Anyone had a simliar problem? I'm soon to bust the drives out of the USB enclosures and plug them into my machine via IDE, and I don't want to resort to that! Here is are my machine specs: Gigabyte GA-KAVM800M (rev 2.0) Mobo AMD Sempron 2600+ 1 Gig RAM WD 320 Gig SATA HD Radeon 9200se vid card Vista Ultimate Mcafee AV

08-24-2007, 04:15 PM	#2 (permalink)
huxley2112 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 2 OS: Vista Ultimate	Re: USB HDD problems This issue was solved by adding a pci USB adapter. Plugged both external drives into that and they work fine now.