I specifically joined the community to help others who many encounter this problem.
Context
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I have a Toshiba MK6025GAS external USB hard disk housed in a plastic hard disk case with two logical drives E: and F: both 30GB in size.
My Toshiba Satellite A50 laptop uses XP SP2.
Problem
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For some spontaneous reason, when plugging the device into the USB port, it does not Autorun and the drive letter do not appear in Explorer nor Disk Management although it recognises the device as an external USB device.
Solution
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Unscrew the housing screws, remove the front face plate connector, slide out the HD. Rejoin the connector to the HD, slide back into the cover and screw back.
Cause
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Loose connections. I removed the HD to confirm the make and model. I re-connected the face and plugged into the PC and it works!
I noticed the HD is ‘held’ by the front connnector and as I tend to store it vertically in my laptop case suspect the weight of the HD prised itself from the face connector.
Conclusion
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After racking my brains contemplating the loss of data and deciding ways to fix the problem without re-installing XP or altering device and BIOS settings found in the end a very basic problem and solution.
