USB Device Not Recognized (External Hard Drive)

[skipjack2001 0]

I know this is an old thread.. but I thought I'd add my solution that I just stumbled upon today.

 

 

Soooo.... my WD 120GB External stopped working today which freaked me out because I had just used it to back up all my stuff whilst I dropped a new internal drive in my PC. It was working fine after the swap and I've just been pulling files off it as I needed them as to not clutter my new internal drive with unneeded stuff. (I'm OCD about hard drive space... I can't help it).

 

This morning however, I plugged in the old WD and it gave me the "Unrecognized" error. I tried everything: Power Management, different cables, different ports, turning it on its side, uninstalling, blah blah... nothing worked. I new it was still good because it worked in my laptop just fine.

 

I kept reading all over the web that it may be a power issue.. that the drive isn't getting enough to properly spin up and enumerate with the USB hub.

 

Then I realized I had added my printer to my newly rebuilt PC after I had used the external drive to copy some files. You see, I have this "Energy Star" HP USB printer that my dad gave me because he hated it. It really is kind of annoying because there's no easy way to turn it off when not in use.. you have to press and hold the power button like 3 times before it shuts down.

 

Anyway.. long story short.. I turned off the printer (which also disconnects its USB connection), replugged in the WD and it fired right up! Apparently my "Energy Star" compliant printer is drawing too much energy for my USB hub to also run my WD drive.

 

So, if anyone is still having trouble, try disconnecting other USB devices to allow as much juice to flow to your drive as possible.

 

Good luck.

[Jones1 0]

I just stumbled across this thread after having issues with transferring large amounts of data from my Western Digital Elements 1.5 TB external hard drive to my internal NTFS formatted SATA hard drive. I keep getting the following error message: 0x80070037. A google search about the error generated a thread that discussed that "power from the motherboard may not be ample enough to keep the external drive powered", thus the failure in the transfer of the data.

 

The power seems to be intermittent, as the device dies then comes back to life after a few minutes. It dies no matter which USB port (front & back ports) I plug into. It works fine in two other household PC's.

 

This external drive has it's own AC power supply, so I'm confused.

Does USB power have anything to do with this problem if the external drive has it's own power supply?

 

I read earlier in this thread that replacing the USB cord can help.

What type of USB cord should I buy?

 

Additional info (if it matters):

I'm running 64 bit Windows 7 with all of the current Windows updates.

Asus Motherboard: P6T SE

 

Thanks!

[Jones1 0]

Ok. Consider my problem solved.

 

I had a faulty power strip that the hard drive was plugged into which caused the intermittent power issues thus generating the error message and transfer failures.

 

Thanks for the quick replies.

[DustinDeTorres 0]

Most likely the problem with this unit, is just what the manufacturer says (see my earlier posts), either the motherboard does not supply enough power to run the drive, or, like in Richie2066's case, he found a faulty/loose cable connection.

 

Also, USB external hubs can be a problem for Windows. Kinda a catch 22. But, WD notes that they have an external poer supply that may solve the problem. Prearve also was told that he had a faulty drive by WD. He did not post if this solved the problem, but it could also be possible.

 

I had one external drive that came with a dual USB cable. If plugged into the system with just one, the unit would not be recognized. If I used both and the unit was seen correctly by Windows. So, an issue with having enough power through the USB ports was the issue in this case.

 

I have also seen an issue with front mounted USB (aux. ports) on some systems. Use the USB ports on the back of the computer (the ones directly connected to the motherboard) and the unit works. Also a power issue.

Good Point. Is there any way to fix front mounted USB? MY CPU got this problem since I bought it.