J
Joel
I've had some weird behavior on my WinXP Pro system since adding two
firewire drives about a year ago (Plextor PX-504UF CD/DVD burner) and a
LaCie D2 120Gig hard drive. It takes 3 restarts any time I need to
restart the computer before the external drives + the LAN is recognized.
1st restart: LAN is recognized but neither of the external drives are.
2nd restart: external drives are recognized, but, no LAN (or internet
connectivity - which is through LAN/cable modem). 3rd restart:
everything is recognized. This behavior was fairly consistent and I
pretty much ignored it because (a) neither Plextor nor LaCie was much
help when I first reported it, and (b) I seldom have to restart.
I've since added a 2nd firewire drive (SimpleTech 160gb) to the mix for
backup purposes and the startup behavior changed somewhat, but, is still
weird. 1st restart: LAN is recognized but no external drives. 2nd
restart: LAN is recognized + the original Plextor burner + LaCie drive
are recognized, but, not the new SimpleTech drive. 3rd restart: LAN
plus all 3 external drives are recognized.
I wouldn't be too concerned except that while trying to copy files from
the LaCie drive to the SimpleTech, I got errors and when I clicked on
certain folders on the Lacie drive, I got "drive p: is not formatted. Do
you want to format now?" To make a long story short... I used the WinXP
Check for Errors disk tool and it recovered the files, some in the
original folders and some in a new found.000 folder at the root, with a
dir0000.chk folder within that. I copied the found files to the backup
drive.
2 days later, after turning off the computer to add additional RAM, I
restarted it and then connected the firewire cable. Later, when I tried
accessing some of the files that had previously been lost (then
recovered) on the Lacie drive, they were gone again! But, after
restarting the computer, they were back.
So, a bunch of questions related to this...
1- any thoughts on why the weird startup behavior?
2- is there a preferred way to start and stop the computer while the
externals are connected? IOW, was I wrong to start the computer and
then plug in the firewire cable
3- should I completely reformat the Lacie drive and start over? or, does
that drive sound like it's failing?
FYI, the drives are connected as follows.... Firewire cable from the
computer goes to the Plextor burner. Passthrough from Plextor goes to
the Lacie drive. Passthrough from there goes to the Simpletech.
firewire drives about a year ago (Plextor PX-504UF CD/DVD burner) and a
LaCie D2 120Gig hard drive. It takes 3 restarts any time I need to
restart the computer before the external drives + the LAN is recognized.
1st restart: LAN is recognized but neither of the external drives are.
2nd restart: external drives are recognized, but, no LAN (or internet
connectivity - which is through LAN/cable modem). 3rd restart:
everything is recognized. This behavior was fairly consistent and I
pretty much ignored it because (a) neither Plextor nor LaCie was much
help when I first reported it, and (b) I seldom have to restart.
I've since added a 2nd firewire drive (SimpleTech 160gb) to the mix for
backup purposes and the startup behavior changed somewhat, but, is still
weird. 1st restart: LAN is recognized but no external drives. 2nd
restart: LAN is recognized + the original Plextor burner + LaCie drive
are recognized, but, not the new SimpleTech drive. 3rd restart: LAN
plus all 3 external drives are recognized.
I wouldn't be too concerned except that while trying to copy files from
the LaCie drive to the SimpleTech, I got errors and when I clicked on
certain folders on the Lacie drive, I got "drive p: is not formatted. Do
you want to format now?" To make a long story short... I used the WinXP
Check for Errors disk tool and it recovered the files, some in the
original folders and some in a new found.000 folder at the root, with a
dir0000.chk folder within that. I copied the found files to the backup
drive.
2 days later, after turning off the computer to add additional RAM, I
restarted it and then connected the firewire cable. Later, when I tried
accessing some of the files that had previously been lost (then
recovered) on the Lacie drive, they were gone again! But, after
restarting the computer, they were back.
So, a bunch of questions related to this...
1- any thoughts on why the weird startup behavior?
2- is there a preferred way to start and stop the computer while the
externals are connected? IOW, was I wrong to start the computer and
then plug in the firewire cable
3- should I completely reformat the Lacie drive and start over? or, does
that drive sound like it's failing?
FYI, the drives are connected as follows.... Firewire cable from the
computer goes to the Plextor burner. Passthrough from Plextor goes to
the Lacie drive. Passthrough from there goes to the Simpletech.