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[SOLVED] External USB hard drive issues

1K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  jimrich 
#1 ·
My OS is Win xp, sp3, home ed.
I have a Toshiba 320 GB USB external hard drive which has been performing very well until lately.
The Toshiba drive starts out by turning on and off or running the Auto-play mode. An Autoplay box opens to tell me the device has mixed content and gives me a set of options so I pick “No action”. Somehow the computer sees the Toshiba drive as a CD! The Toshiba turns on and off for a long time (5-10 min) then it settles down, stays on and I can go in and out of it to enter or retrieve info normally. I have gone into the Device manager and other places and re-set all the Defaults where I can. This is a disturbing issue as I wish to have a dependable External drive instead of this “shaky” Drive but I believe the issue is in Windows Explorer and not the Toshiba drive.
My latest effort was to re set the Defaults in Auto-play and restart computer. Toshiba did it's on/off thing for a few minutes but no Auto-play thing and now it allows me to use it (Toshiba) normally! It's a little disturbing but I can live with it so long as the stored material is safe. Why does win. explorer see the storage drive as a CD? Is this a "Services" issue?
Thanks for your feedback and help in this matter,
Jim :smile:
 
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#2 ·
Re: External USB hard drive issues

Meanwhile.........
I have run several apps to examine the Toshiba drive and they all come up positive indicating that the drive is OK so I'm suspecting Windows Explorer or something within the computer of causing problems with the Toshiba drive. :ermm:
 
#4 ·
Re: External USB hard drive issues

Check Disk Manager; several USB Drives come with a "CD" Partition which is usually the one with software, and a second one which acts as the storage partition.
It took some doing but I finally got to that Disk Manager. The Toshiba drive is not listed there. Not sure what I would do about the "Partition" thing even if I could see it. Thanks for the comment though..........
Jim
 
#7 ·
Re: External USB hard drive issues

Alls well now! Someone in another forum told me how to set up the Power options in Control panel> Power management and someone at another forum gave me a tip about an App. called NoSleep tool which keeps the drive from going to "sleep" if so programmed. Not sure now which fix is working but the Toshiba is performing very well - like it did in the beginning so - wish me luck that it stays reliable and usable.
No, I never did test it in another computer. I never thought the Toshiba drive was the problem.
Thanks for all your help and support,
Jim :smile:
 
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