External Hard Drive Goes Missing

I have an external 1 TB Lacie Big Disk Extreme drive that goes missing from
time to time. Getting it back requires a full restart.

I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate (Service Pack 1).

The device is still listed under Device Manager when it goes missing. There
is a yellow exclamation point next to the drive. Double-clicking on the
drive brings up a window that informs me that Error Code 43 is responsible
for this drive being inoperable.

After contacting Lacie's technical support I was informed that this is a
Windows Vista problem. Specifically, Code 43 is related to a missing driver.
"We don't make a driver for this drive..." is what I was informed by the
technical support representative. The guy also noted that this problem is
almost nonexistent under Windows XP. "But with Windows Vista... well, it's
just all over the place..."

If there is no driver associated with this drive -- according to Lacie --
and yet if Windows Vista is requiring this driver (and thus reporting it
missing) how am I ever to get past this problem????

Or is there something else that might explain what is going on here?

I have a USB powered 2.5 inch form factor external drive connected to a
notebook which occasionally does the same thing under XP.
Occasionally when the computer is booted the external hard drive is not
recognized although it is powered up.
Presumably when the USB bus is scanned under some circumstances some devices
are not properly recognized USB is not infallible.
You should also make sure the drive is plugged into a USB port that connects
directly to the motherboard and not an external USB multiport device.
Your leg should feel longer after talking to whoever you talked to at Lacie.
There are no additional drivers needed to run your device in Vista.
When my notebook drive acts up simply unplugging and replugging in the drive
restores its functions. Of course every time you do that you have to reset
the sharing permissions because it is a brand new drive as far as Windows is
concerned.
I do not know if you have tried this or, in system/device manager right
clicking on anything and select scan for hardware changes.
If the problem persists it could be a sign that the hard drive is failing,
or there is a problem with its USB circuitry. I would run a software
diagnostic on the hard drive as soon as possible because if the hard drive
is failing a terrabyte is a lot of lost data.

Thanks very much for your input.

By the way, I'm using a FireWire 400 connection to this external hard drive.

I will continue to play around with some of the settings/options you noted.
Hopefully this situation will not continue too much longer.


"Nogginsaked" wrote:

> I have a USB powered 2.5 inch form factor external drive connected to a
> notebook which occasionally does the same thing under XP.
> Occasionally when the computer is booted the external hard drive is not
> recognized although it is powered up.
> Presumably when the USB bus is scanned under some circumstances some devices
> are not properly recognized USB is not infallible.
> You should also make sure the drive is plugged into a USB port that connects
> directly to the motherboard and not an external USB multiport device.
> Your leg should feel longer after talking to whoever you talked to at Lacie.
> There are no additional drivers needed to run your device in Vista.
> When my notebook drive acts up simply unplugging and replugging in the drive
> restores its functions. Of course every time you do that you have to reset
> the sharing permissions because it is a brand new drive as far as Windows is
> concerned.
> I do not know if you have tried this or, in system/device manager right
> clicking on anything and select scan for hardware changes.
> If the problem persists it could be a sign that the hard drive is failing,
> or there is a problem with its USB circuitry. I would run a software
> diagnostic on the hard drive as soon as possible because if the hard drive
> is failing a terrabyte is a lot of lost data.
>
>