Seagate FreeAgent Ext Drive

[bdnihm]

I have been trying to look up my freeagent ext drive to my dell dimension B110.
no luck. thought it might be the drive, but it worked first time when i
plugged it into a different pc.
any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[Ed Covney]

any suggestions?

Perhaps you could start by telling us the problem?

From what you've told us thus far, are we suppose
to guess if your PC was even turned on?

Ed

 

[Paul]

I have been trying to look up my freeagent ext drive to my dell dimension B110.
no luck. thought it might be the drive, but it worked first time when i
plugged it into a different pc.
any suggestions?
Thanks

Have you verified that the USB ports in question, are still working ?
For example, if you plugged in a USB keyboard to the USB port,
does the keyboard work ? Test the ports first.

Occasionally, there are some computer cases, where the wiring leading
to the front mounted USB ports, doesn't work properly with high speed
signals. In that case, try the ports on the back of the computer, as
the wiring to those is superior in quality.

You can use this tool (UVCView), and watch what happens when a new USB device is
plugged in. web.archive.org has been slow lately, so there is no
guarantee this is going to work the first time you try it. I'm
getting a "failed" message right now. Microsoft removed this download,
which is why I use an archived version. The second link, if web.archive.org
was working, would show all the dates where they archived a copy.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060509...f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x86.exe
http://web.archive.org/*/http://dow...f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x86.exe

When that tool is executed and working, the display looks similar to this.

http://www.die.de/blog/content/binary/usbview.png

Paul

 

[Anna]

I had a Maxtor Ext HD and it worked great for a time. Then, my PC
wouldn't even recognize it. I tried multiple USB ports and decided to
buy a FreeAgent drive. It has been working great. I gave the Maxtor
one to my wife and she has been using it without a hitch on her PC.
Got me!

-pw

bdnihm, Paul (and anyone else who might be interested...)
These USB non-recognition problems have been vexing all of us for some time
now. Hardly a day passes where queries similar to the above are posted to
this and other newsgroups dealing with XP issues.

We've become increasingly convinced that the relatively large number of
problems in this area involving the non-recognition of USB devices that
we've all been experiencing is an indication that there is something
seriously flawed with respect to either the USB 2.0 specifications, possibly
involving quality control issues affecting the manufacturer of these USB
devices as well as supporting components such as motherboards and other
USB-related components. Then too, we've become increasingly suspicious of
the XP OS as it relates to its recognition of and interaction with these USB
2.0 devices.

We have encountered far too many unexplained problems affecting
detection/recognition of these devices and their erratic functioning not to
believe that something is seriously amiss in this area.

We continually encounter situations where a USB 2.0 device - generally
involving a flash drive or USB external hard drive, will work perfectly fine
in one machine and not in another. And, in far too many cases, we're unable
to determine why this is so since we're unable to detect any
hardware/software problem in the balking machine that would cause this
non-recognition effect.

We've put together a more-or-less checklist for troubleshooting these rather
common USB non-recognition problems that (hopefully) may be of some value to
users encountering this type of problem...

1. Access Disk Management and see if the USB device is listed. If so, and
there's no drive letter assigned, see if you can assign a drive letter to
the device.
2. If the USB device is listed in Disk Management with an assigned drive
letter, right-click on its listing and select Explore from the submenu.
Hopefully, Windows Explorer will open and the device will be listed.
3. Connect the USB device *directly* to a USB port on the computer, not via
a USB hub. Try different USB ports should your computer have multiple ports.
4. Avoid using a USB extension cable.
5. Try connecting a USB device (that does not contain an auxiliary power
supply) to a USB port both before and after the boot operation.
6. Where a USB (or Firewire) external HDD is involved, access Device
Manager, highlight the Disk drives listing and click on the Action menu item
and then the "Scan for hardware changes" sub-menu item. Do the same in Disk
Management > Action > Rescan disks.
7. Try alternate powering on/off methods. If the USB device contains its own
power supply, try booting up with its power on, then try powering on only
*after* the system has booted to a Desktop.
8. Try a different USB cable.
9. In the USB controllers section of Device Manager, uninstall all the USB
controllers listed and reboot.
10. If the device in question is not a commercial USB external HDD but
rather one in which you installed a PATA HDD in a USB enclosure, jumper the
HDD as Master (or Single if the HDD is a Western Digital disk). A number of
users have reported that jumper configuration corrected their
non-recognition problem. In my own experience it didn't seem to matter how a
USB external HDD was jumpered. But it may be worth a try.
11. If the device in question is a USB external HDD, first check out the HDD
with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. If it checks out OK,
and you can remove the HDD from its enclosure (without voiding any
applicable warranty), do so and install the HDD as an internal HDD to
determine if there are problems with the drive.
12. If the USB device is connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card, try changing the
card's PCI slot.
13. Access the website of the manufacturer of the USB device to determine if
there's any firmware update or info re the problem you're experiencing or
there's any possibility that the USB enclosure itself might be defective.
14. Determine from the manufacturer of your motherboard whether there's a
BIOS upgrade affecting USB device recognition.
Anna

P.S.
A number of posters have reported they've found useful information re
troubleshooting USB devices on this site...
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

 

[Paul]

bdnihm, Paul (and anyone else who might be interested...)
These USB non-recognition problems have been vexing all of us for some time
now. Hardly a day passes where queries similar to the above are posted to
this and other newsgroups dealing with XP issues.

We've become increasingly convinced that the relatively large number of
problems in this area involving the non-recognition of USB devices that
we've all been experiencing is an indication that there is something
seriously flawed with respect to either the USB 2.0 specifications, possibly
involving quality control issues affecting the manufacturer of these USB
devices as well as supporting components such as motherboards and other
USB-related components. Then too, we've become increasingly suspicious of
the XP OS as it relates to its recognition of and interaction with these USB
2.0 devices.

We have encountered far too many unexplained problems affecting
detection/recognition of these devices and their erratic functioning not to
believe that something is seriously amiss in this area.

We continually encounter situations where a USB 2.0 device - generally
involving a flash drive or USB external hard drive, will work perfectly fine
in one machine and not in another. And, in far too many cases, we're unable
to determine why this is so since we're unable to detect any
hardware/software problem in the balking machine that would cause this
non-recognition effect.

We've put together a more-or-less checklist for troubleshooting these rather
common USB non-recognition problems that (hopefully) may be of some value to
users encountering this type of problem...

1. Access Disk Management and see if the USB device is listed. If so, and
there's no drive letter assigned, see if you can assign a drive letter to
the device.
2. If the USB device is listed in Disk Management with an assigned drive
letter, right-click on its listing and select Explore from the submenu.
Hopefully, Windows Explorer will open and the device will be listed.
3. Connect the USB device *directly* to a USB port on the computer, not via
a USB hub. Try different USB ports should your computer have multiple ports.
4. Avoid using a USB extension cable.
5. Try connecting a USB device (that does not contain an auxiliary power
supply) to a USB port both before and after the boot operation.
6. Where a USB (or Firewire) external HDD is involved, access Device
Manager, highlight the Disk drives listing and click on the Action menu item
and then the "Scan for hardware changes" sub-menu item. Do the same in Disk
Management > Action > Rescan disks.
7. Try alternate powering on/off methods. If the USB device contains its own
power supply, try booting up with its power on, then try powering on only
*after* the system has booted to a Desktop.
8. Try a different USB cable.
9. In the USB controllers section of Device Manager, uninstall all the USB
controllers listed and reboot.
10. If the device in question is not a commercial USB external HDD but
rather one in which you installed a PATA HDD in a USB enclosure, jumper the
HDD as Master (or Single if the HDD is a Western Digital disk). A number of
users have reported that jumper configuration corrected their
non-recognition problem. In my own experience it didn't seem to matter how a
USB external HDD was jumpered. But it may be worth a try.
11. If the device in question is a USB external HDD, first check out the HDD
with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. If it checks out OK,
and you can remove the HDD from its enclosure (without voiding any
applicable warranty), do so and install the HDD as an internal HDD to
determine if there are problems with the drive.
12. If the USB device is connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card, try changing the
card's PCI slot.
13. Access the website of the manufacturer of the USB device to determine if
there's any firmware update or info re the problem you're experiencing or
there's any possibility that the USB enclosure itself might be defective.
14. Determine from the manufacturer of your motherboard whether there's a
BIOS upgrade affecting USB device recognition.
Anna

P.S.
A number of posters have reported they've found useful information re
troubleshooting USB devices on this site...
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html

Since you deal with more of these things than us home users, you could
stock up on a diagnostic aid. This might allow basic characterization
of performance, such as error rate, on a suspect USB port.

http://www.passmark.com/products/usb2loopback.htm

In the lab, engineers use $35K to $50K digital storage scopes, and
software like this, to check eye diagrams for USB2. Not every small
development firm, can do characterization of their end product, and
perhaps they have to send out the product for compliance testing.
I've used this same test technique in the past, and it's fun, because
the scope does all the work

http://www.testequity.com/products/1181/

One of the early USB2 equipped motherboards, had a BIOS setting
for "drive strength" for USB2. Motherboards since then, no longer
have a setting like that. I'm not aware of anyone using the drive
strength setting, as part of experimentation with non-functional
USB devices. But it was interesting that it was provided for
the first ones.

There is a known problem with ICH5/ICH5R Southbridge and USB port
failures. When they fail, all the USB ports fail at the same time.
But it shouldn't take too long to figure it out, as even plugging
in things like USB keyboards doesn't work. And everything in Device
Manager looks normal, as it is just the physical layer that has
failed. I'm not aware of other chipsets having a problem like that.
For add-in cards, apparently some NEC chips have had port failures,
presumably due to ESD.

Paul

 

[Anna]

Since you deal with more of these things than us home users, you could
stock up on a diagnostic aid. This might allow basic characterization
of performance, such as error rate, on a suspect USB port.

http://www.passmark.com/products/usb2loopback.htm

In the lab, engineers use $35K to $50K digital storage scopes, and
software like this, to check eye diagrams for USB2. Not every small
development firm, can do characterization of their end product, and
perhaps they have to send out the product for compliance testing.
I've used this same test technique in the past, and it's fun, because
the scope does all the work

http://www.testequity.com/products/1181/

One of the early USB2 equipped motherboards, had a BIOS setting
for "drive strength" for USB2. Motherboards since then, no longer
have a setting like that. I'm not aware of anyone using the drive
strength setting, as part of experimentation with non-functional
USB devices. But it was interesting that it was provided for
the first ones.

There is a known problem with ICH5/ICH5R Southbridge and USB port
failures. When they fail, all the USB ports fail at the same time.
But it shouldn't take too long to figure it out, as even plugging
in things like USB keyboards doesn't work. And everything in Device
Manager looks normal, as it is just the physical layer that has
failed. I'm not aware of other chipsets having a problem like that.
For add-in cards, apparently some NEC chips have had port failures,
presumably due to ESD.

Paul

Paul:
Thanks. We're quite familiar with the Passmark device having used it a
number of times in the shops I worked in. Unfortunately in the specific type
of problem under discussion I didn't find it a practical diagnostic tool in
that situation although the device did serve a useful purpose in other kinds
of USB non-detection problems.

And I certainly haven't worked with the Tektronix software that you
mentioned.

As far as the chipsets go, again, related to this *specific* USB
non-recognition problem primarily involving USB flash drives & USB external
HDDs, we have been unable to find any direct relationship between this or
that chipset and the cause of the problem. Needless to say it's been a very
frustrating problem because of the absence of a cause-effect relationship in
too many cases (at least our inability to find such). Frankly my own
suspicions fall on the XP OS and poor quality control involving these USB
devices (or a combination of the two!), but it's only my suspicion based on
anecdotal evidence and in no way would I want it be interpreted as
definitive.
Anna

 

[JohnO]

As far as the chipsets go, again, related to this *specific* USB

non-recognition problem primarily involving USB flash drives & USB
external HDDs, we have been unable to find any direct relationship between
this or that chipset and the cause of the problem. Needless to say it's
been a very frustrating problem because of the absence of a cause-effect
relationship in too many cases (at least our inability to find such).
Frankly my own suspicions fall on the XP OS and poor quality control
involving these USB devices (or a combination of the two!), but it's only
my suspicion based on anecdotal evidence and in no way would I want it be
interpreted as definitive.
Anna

Anna, have you seen this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823732
It's suspiciously similar to the problem described earlier.

-John O

 

[Paul]

Anna, have you seen this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823732
It's suspiciously similar to the problem described earlier.

-John O

There are also USB protocol analysers, which record bus activity.
A developer might use one of those, assuming the physical layer
is functional. That allows viewing what the OS is trying to do.

Paul

 

[JohnO]

There are also USB protocol analysers, which record bus activity.
A developer might use one of those, assuming the physical layer
is functional. That allows viewing what the OS is trying to do.

Paul

I had no idea a USB protocol analyzer would be that deep into a system bus.
Interesting.

-John O

 

[Paul]

I had no idea a USB protocol analyzer would be that deep into a system bus.
Interesting.

-John O

By that, I mean a hardware device that can examine and record USB packets, as they
travel over the USB cable. Looking at the packets, you can reconstruct
whether the OS was polling, whether it reacted at all when a device
was plugged in, and so on.

http://www.corelis.com/products/USB-Analyzers.htm

And yes, you can also find software to do the same thing, only more
oriented towards the OS end.

http://www.usblyzer.com/

There is also an alternate USB stack, something I saw on the usb.org site,
but I couldn't find it when I just looked. Something to do with testing.

I think it is possible to learn quite a bit about USB operation, with
some methods being a lot cheaper than others.

Paul