I've found the starting current draw on some external drives exceeds the
500mA spec on a USB port.
This will result in the sort of error you describe. (Though I haven't
seen the cyclical behavior.)
Some large external drive adapters utilize either a supplemental (dual)
USB power solution or a USB plus PS/2 port power solution in order to
supply more than the single USB 500mA limit as a workaround for the
higher starting current.
Andrew Webber wrote:
I'm not sure these are related, so I'll start with the known problem.
I have an external bus-powered drive that's always worked well. I
plugged it into the top USB port of the T41p and while the light went
on, I got a message about not recognizing the drive. I moved it to the
bottom USB port and it was recognized.
Is it possible the top port is delivering less than the required
voltage? Would that seem like a reasonable thing for it to be doing (I
don't recall it happening in the past). Right now I have a
self-powered desktop external in the USB port and it's working okay.
Also, with the bus-powered drive, I got an error at one point related
to E:\$MFt (not sure of the exact spelling). I googled and found a lot
of posts on error messages for this. Master File Table I think and it
sounded serious. No number of shutdowns and restarts (of the computer)
seemed to make a difference.
I plugged the drive into another machine and it worked fine, no MFt
error. Put it back into the T41p (bottom port and through a powered
hub this time) and got the MFt error again. It seemed to be cycling
through it: MFt error, E: drops off My Computer, E: is recognized, MFt
error, etc.
Is it possible the MFt message is stuck in a record somewhere and it's
producing this message without actually seeing anything's wrong?
Thanks!
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