No-Go Vaio and Maxtor external USB HDD

[Bill Halvorsen]

I bought a Maxtor 250GB USB drive, thinking USB drives were "quick and
easy" to install.

I got "unrecognized USB device" and finally got it recognized as a "mass
storage device" - even got it to show in My Computer... but only for about
five minutes. That was after much miserable troubleshooting. Then, just as
suddenly as it worked, it stopped again, briefly showing "no free space"
before it went back to the yellow exclamation point in device manager, and
Maxtor's diagnostic saying essentially "can't do anything since Windows
doesn't see what you think it should."

This is on a Sony VGC-RA820G, and the only other USB device I had in use is
a HP Deskjet 6540, plugged into the back of the machine, which has never
caused a moment's problem. I have long thought "USB has finally become
stable" (after misadventures in the pre-XP world).

The front of the machine also has 3 USB ports, none in use, so I plugged in
Maxtor in there at first, and that resulted in "unrecognized device."
Actually it prevented Windows from booting (XP Media Center 2005) a couple
of times. I decided to try a port on the back, and that got the hard drive
working, for those 5 minutes.

I took the Maxtor back and got a refund. I have a USB camera, USB scanner,
USB universal remote control. None have EVER had a problem with the Sony
computer.

I am now wondering, should I try another USB HDD or is USB trouble with
HDD's and Vaio computers (or any computers) a problem? Googling around was
inconclusive. Perhaps the time isn't right for the "Mass Storage Device"
via USB? My computer has all the MS updates installed. It is said to be
fully USB 2.0 compliant, evidently with Intel drivers (chips too?).

Thanks - Bill

 

[Guest]

Well the port that prevented xp from booting is probably where you
should plug it into.The reason xp failed was the BIOS moved the maxtor
drive to 1st boot priority or similiar.Also,i believe that drive requires
maxtor
software to run.

 

[Bill Halvorsen]

Maxtor includes no driver on CD, no instructions except a tiny "quick-start"
card, and that is that. I confirmed that on their website. I even
scrutinized the box on a couple other USB drives and it was the same story -
power supply, good USB cable, power transformer, and no software, so this
seems "normal" in the USB drive world. I am surprised that there was no
software CD, with maintenance utilities, but there is a tiny downloadable
diagnostic on their website; and I ran it, and the verdict rendered was
something like "no device found that you are looking for."