USB external hard drive - re-activate

[msnews.microsoft.com]

Hi i recently put together an external USB2.0 external hd. Its one of those
enclosure kits that can house a standard HD. I have a maxtor 250GB drive.
Everything works great until i power off the drive and turn it back on at a
later point. Then in order for the drive to re-appear i have to go into
computer manager and re-activate the disk in order to get windows explorer
to see the drive again. Is there any way i can avoid this extra step
everytime? I've even tried 'safely' removing the usb device and no luck. I
have a USB camera with a memory stick that never seems to have this problem
and always comes up as drive F each time, so i would imagine it should be
something possible to accomplish.

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

--minnoce944

 

[Sandman]

Have you checked the Computer Management applet in Control Panel, under
Storage? The disk should appear in theri and be assigned a letter for the
drive; it is down the 'tree' under disc mangaemnet...

 

[minnoce944]

Yeah its there in the disk management until i power it off.
When i power it back on it gets listed as disk 1 and i have to re-activate
it in order for it to appear again with a drive letter.

--minnoce944