External HD Not Listed After PC Re-Powered On

Some background here.

Running XP Home SP3.

My Book Essentials 2TB external USB.

The drive’s USB connection is through a powered USB hub (Belkin).

Drive is used for backups. Backup program shuts down PC when backup is completed.

AC Power adapter to drive remains on.

When the PC is off the drive LED blinks slowly.

On the next PC power on, the LED blinks rapidly for a while then becomes on steady.

When booting is finished the drive is not listed in My Computer, Windows Explorer or Disk Management.

Removing and reconnecting the power cable to the drive (leaving USB cable connected) the drive is once more operationally normal

In addition, I have an older My Book Essential Edition 2.0, 1TB ext USB  drive similarly connected and it does not exhibit this “problem”.

Is there anything I can do to keep the drive “alive” after a PC power off and on?

Or is this a procedure I must live with?

Did you try connecting it without the hub and see if the same thing happens? That would show if it the hub is the problem or not.

Joe

Thanks, Joe, for responding.

Yes, the same thing happens when drive USB is connected directly to  a PC USB port.

I got the hub because I thought I had too many USB devices on the PC’s ports.

As I mentioned, the older My Book works as expected and it is on the hub.

By the way, I do not use SmartWare  on this drive .  I deleted it from drive but saved it to a CD.

I did not like some of its processes.

Could that be an issue? Can I reinstall the SmartWare? 

Smarware shouldn’t be an issue, I uninstalled it too. Did you go though the full path from USB to drive and make sure there are no sleep settings set some place. You may need to go into advanced power settings and the device manager both. What backup software are you using? Make sure there isn’t a setting there. When the dive is connected find the driver in device manager and delete it manually remove the drive then reboot system and reconnect drive. It should load a fresh driver then. I can’t think of much else.

Joe

Hello Joe, I haven’t been ignoring you.

My backup program is Acronis True Image Home 2011.

My drive (s) have been behaving normally now. Don’t really understand all I don’t know about this.

Maybe I was hit by a cosmic ray (watching too much science stuff on TV).

I tried to make sense out of the USB Root stuff in Device Manager.

I could not relate the listings to the individual physical ports on my PC.

As I understand USB ports is this.

The drive’s USB cable supplies the USB data lines (D+ and D-).

It also supplies 5 Volts DC for the logic circuitry in the drive.

The AC adapter supplies 12 Volts DC for the drive’s motor (and maybe other stuff ?).

I have a Powered USB Hub which supplies the 5 Volts (5 Volts from PC ends here) and just passes the data lines thru from the PC to the drive. The AC adapter is connected as usual.

So when my PC shuts down, the Data goes away but the 5 volts and 12 volts remain on. I don’t know the state of the drive’s D+ and D- lines.

So maybe when the PC is turned back on, perhaps what happens depends on what state the data lines at the drive were last found.

Too much info!

Anyway, if I have to cycle the power to the drive to wake it up, so be it.

Or maybe I’ll have Acronis not shut the PC down (not being very Green).