WD Passport drive letters dissappear after removed and reattached.

[AreYouOutThere]

Hi Everyone,

Got a situation with (2) separate SBS 2008 servers doing the same identical thing with Western Digital "My Passport" drives.

We use the (5) drives coupled w/ Backup Exec for nightly backups. We instruct the client to everyday, simply remove drive and replace with labeled drive for the current day.

This strategy HAS BEEN working fine for months even though WD stresses that it does not support the Server OS... go figure...

3 weeks ago, we notice at around the same time on both servers; the drive letter disappears from My Computer/Disk Management after a drive swap - next drive never gets re-detected albeit, taskbar shows that the device is conected.

Drive letter will only resurface w/ Server reboot. The backup will run as scheduled; when client swaps drive the next day, drive letter lost and not to be resurrected w/o Server reboot.

So, has anyone experienced anything like this?? We've searched high and low, google groups; got desperate and adjusted power management settings on usb ports, removed all usb root hubs to have them re-detected/reinstalled. Tried power boosting usb cables (2 ports into 1 drive splitter cable) still not working.

At this point I'm thinking there's some sort MS update that screwed things up recently?? It's only w/ SBS 2008 so... very strange

Any help or insight is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

J

 

[Beowulf005]

Couple of suggestions

If you connect the USB drive to another USB port does the drive letter show w/o a reboot?

The USB could be corrupt from all the hot swapping. Go into device manger and right click on all usb ports-->Delete and reboot.

I doubt....but there was an update to autoplay last month.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971029

maybe its affecting the WD drives

When frustrated remember, in the computer world there is almost always a backdoor.