USB hard drive (not flash) recognized only intermittently

[polyphase]

I have this http://www.amazon.com/BUFFALO-MiniStation-Stealth-Portable-Drive/dp/B0046RE21G Buffalo ministation 500 GB USB drive. I formatted it on a Linux machine as Fat32 and loaded it up with mp3 files.

My MS recognizes the drive some of the time. When I fire up the car and the drive works it takes several minutes to scan the entire drive to catalog the music. Most often though, the drive is not recognized. The power light on the drive does not come on. Pulling and reinserting the USB cable does nothing.. The car is not set to sleep when I leave the car.

Has anyone else seen this or have a clue why it might be happening? Thanks.

 

[yobigd20]

I have the 1TB version of this drive and never had any of those issues. Try the other USB slot if you haven't already (could be a faulty cable in the car itself).

Also, mine always shows up immediately and never had it take 'a few minutes' to scan (I always leave it connected though).

I formatted mine to fat32 from a windows machine (though that "shouldn't" make a difference...)

 

[zeron]

That is an actual mechanic hard drive, so it requires quite some power, usually more than a single USB port can deliver. You could try getting a Dual USB cable to give it the power from the second USB port, too.

 

[yobigd20]

so it requires quite some power, usually more than a single USB port can deliver.

it was designed to run off very little power so this is not the problem...(and besides, mine works fine)

 

[ken830]

Sounds like a (lack of) power issue to me too... 500mA @ 5V is 2.5W... And hard-drives can easily hit that limit in many read/write situations.

EDIT: Just looked up the specs for the drive and it is 2.5W MAX...