I'm no Windows guru but similar things happen on Mac OS X systems. - Back up that disk to another volume. - run a file system and hardware check. I don't know what sw is available on Win to do this, but you should be able to find utilities inexpensively or free. - if the drive checks out, it might be a sign of a failing controller or enclosure interface. Swapping the drive to another known-good enclosure would demonstrate if the enclosure was failing. Use a known good cable of course...
At three and a half years old, it's a little young yet to be close to failure by the averages, but why take chances? A two terabyte drive AND quality enclosure is barely two hundred dollars these days. I'd add a new one to the system, clone the data over, then erase and continue using the old one as a temp or work drive, keeping it backed up, until it fails. With a suitably comprehensive backup system, the risk of data loss is small. On Tuesday, July 5, 2011, Brian Walters <[email protected]> wrote: > G'day all > > For several months one of my external hard drives has been acting a bit > 'flaky'. > > The drive is permanently attached to the PC but when the computer boots > there is no sign of the drive in Windows Explorer. However, after about > 10-15 minutes, the autoplay window magically appears and the operating > system reads the drive, which then becomes available. The drive > continues to work properly thereafter - until the next boot when the > process starts over again. > > My question is whether the hard disk itself is on the way to hard disk > hell or whether the drive controller is likely to be the culprit. Or > could it be a faulty USB cable? Would it be worth extracting the drive > from its case and try installing it in a new case? The drive is about > three and a half years old. > > Note that I'm not relying on this drive as a primary back up any more, > but it is convenient if it keeps working. And I'm just curious as to > why the drive would be behaving like this. > > > > Cheers > > Brian > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Brian Walters > Western Sydney Australia > http://lyons-ryan.org/southernlight/ > -- > > > -- > http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
