USB Hard Drives

[macevanscb]

I have a server running for our small company using XP Pro. It has a four drive 320GB 1-0 RAID and two 400GB USB drives for backup. The company has grown past 10 users and I'm now installing SBS 2003 with 20 user CALs. After a clean install of SBS, I've lost my USB drives. The RAID came up fine after installing the drivers, but no backup drives. The Device Manager shows an unknown device under USB controllers, which might be the external USB2 hub for the drives. Under XP Pro, the hub and drives just worked without any extra setup. Does anyone know what I need to do to get the hub recognised and the drives to mount under SBS?????? Do I need special USB2.0 drivers???

 

[ShackDaddy]

I would go to the USB drive vendor web-site and see what downloads they have available for Windows 2003 Server. If they have a signed driver, that should be what you need to get those drives recognized.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[macevanscb]

Thanks ShackDaddy, but I've been there. Its a D-Link hub. The only thing on site to download is the manual <sigh>. So I put a tech support request in there. Hopefully they'll have an answer on Monday.

 

[LWComputingMVP]

I doubt it's a hub issue (as in external hub). I suspect Windows Server 2003 is lacking appropriate USB 2.0 drivers for your computer's hardware. I've seen some built-in USB hardware (and even some third party cards) have trouble in 2003. Again, I SERIOUSLY doubt this is a hub or drive issue, more a mainboard hardware issue with the USB bus.

 

[macevanscb]

Thanks, LWComputing for making me bang the cobwebs out of my head. The hub shows up fine in the device manager, so I know its not a problem.

And I apologise to ShackDaddy for totally missing his point to look at the disk drivers, not the hub drivers. Since the USB drives are Seagates, I've asked them if there are any USB 2.0 issues with their 400GB drives.

Is there anyone out there that knows about any USB 2.0 problems with SBS 2003 Premium?????

 

[macevanscb]

Eureka! I finally found the right sequence, which makes sense after reading everyone's USB docs:
1. Power everything off.
2. Unplug all the USB cables.
3. Power up and boot the server.
4. Display the Device Manager to watch things.
5. Plug in the Hub and watch it appear in the Device Manager.
6. Plug in each drive, one at a time, to the hub.

FINALLY, each drive was seen, new hardware wizard ran automagically, drivers for Mass USB storage installed automagically, and the drives showed up in the list under Hard Drives.

I sure don't remember having to go thru all this when I installed the drives under XP Pro.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Forgiven. Glad you got that figured out. It's a good reminder to people to not expect USB devices to be installed when "hot-plugging" them in for the first time on a server. "USB" and "reboot" aren't usually in the same sentence in the XP world, but they occasionally are in the server world, unfortunately.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting