250GB drive "restarts" repeatedly

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Bought this 250GB drive in December, in march (I haven’t had time to mess with it since) I connected it to a NAS to copy some files and when I plugged it into my PC it showed up, then went away, came back immediately, then went away, this repeated several times. I got frustrated and went to work, and haven’t plugged it back in until this morning.

I plugged it in, and Vista said it needed to be formatted, so I hit it with a quick format, and when I plugged it back in, the process of start and stop began again. I am currently running a full format on it, and it remains on while formatting (it seems).

I’ve tried the drive on Windows 7 Ultimate, XP Pro, XP home, and Vista Home

2

update: full format failed - drive restarted again

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No assistance on this?

4

It sounds like the drive has a short of some sort.  Have you tried changing the USB cable?  Remember you will have to use a short one.  If you are using one more then like 18 to 24" the drive wont be supplied with enough power to run properly.  Also have you tried to run WD’s DLG diagnostics utility on the drive and see what it says?  All else fails, you could replace the drive with an RMA from WD well provided its still under warranty.  If you bought it recently I think they come with anything from a 2 to 5 year warranty depending on model.