– we have always backed up our 3 systems with a 250G Western Digital hard drive in an enclosure (Metal Gear Box) connected to a USB 1.1 port ….. we just carry it to each machine, plug it in, and record a disk image via Powerquest DriveImage V7 –
– yesterday after backing up one Win 2K SP4 system (#1) , we moved the enclosed drive to the next Win 2K SP4 system (#2) and suddenly it’s invisible, that is ; MS Explorer cannot see it, ‘Computer Management’ cannot see it , it receives power but doesn’t seem to be spinning , yet when unplugged, Windows gives the usual warning about “Unsafe Removal of Device’ [USB Storage Adapter AT2 (TPP)] –
– we get the same reaction when connecting it to the third Win XP SP2 system (#3)-
– when we return it to #1 it functions correctly and is visible to MS Explorer on that machine only –
– this has never happened before (approx. a year’s worth of backups) and we are totally baffled …….. what could have happened to make the drive visible to one system (#1) but not to the other two ? –
– oh, i neglected to mention that we have another similar hard drive enclosure with a smaller capacity drive so we connected that one …. and all 3 systems can see and access that one just fine –
– so we switched the problem drive to the new enclosure and tested, but it behaved the same as mentioned above ….. thus we have eliminated the enclosure’s electronics from suspicion –
– again, the problem drive continues to function fine on the Win 2K SP4 system (#1) where it last did a backup operation but has somehow become corrupted ? to where this Win 2K SP4 system (#2) and our Win XP SP2 system (#3) can no longer see it ???? !! –