My Book Studio II (2TB) - Vista USB Drive disappears after a while

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I bought a new My Book Studio II 2 TB external hard drive on July 20th. The drive installed correctly (NTFS, Raid 1 - 1TB, 1 volume) and is connected via my USB port. I’m running Vista SP1, Dell XPS 410.

After moving 200 gb of data to the drive everything seemed to be running just fine. Drive letter assigned is K, drive is visable in Explorer and Computer Management.

After 9 days of running without issues, it disconnected (no longer visable) from the PC.  For some reason, the drive occasionally (but frequently) disconnects (or disappears) from visability in Explorer and Computer Management. After re-powering the drive, or restarting the PC, it appears again, as drive letter K.

This is particularly frustrating because the main purpose of the drive is to run backups scheduled during the night. Once the drive disconnects, all the backups fail.

I’ve searched online and on this message board and I’ve not found a solution (perhaps I’ve missed it?).

Any suggestions?

Thanks much.

Mike

2

It happened again yesterday. After the drive sits without activity for a while, the driver is lost and I can’t access the drive. Power off the drive, power it back on, and it once again has a driver installed and I can access it.

Any idea why Vista drops the connection / driver after the drive is idle for a while (less than 24 hours).

thanks again