Yesterday I was backing up my main PC (Windows 7) onto a USB drive. By
'backing up' I mean I was using MS SynchToy to synchronize a few folders
form the PC to those on the drive. The copy operation just froze, though
the computer ran fine. I disconnected and reconnected the drive, and
got a "USB Device Not Recognized Error" - and then the mouse and
keyboard stopped working. Disconnected the drive, powered off the PC,
powered up - it seemed to boot butthe screen was blank. Tried several
times - no audible post error codes, just a blank screen. I plugged the
the USB drive into the Linux (Lubuntu) machine and it worked perfectly.
OK - I figured the video card on the WIn& machine had died and someone
screwed up the USB on its way out (hey - to my mind that makes sense....)
Several hours later and and after a lot of re-booting with no change to
the screen, I decided to disconnect the monitor and pull the video card,
planning to replace it today. I unpluged one monitor and on a whim hit
the power button - it booted fine, screen and all. Put on the second
montior, all was back to normal. The monitor cables were screwed in
tight - but unplugging one of them resolved the issue.
Great - let's get back to backing up. Plugged in the USB drive and the
led on the drive started flickering and flashing like crazy. The
computer did not recognize the drive at all. Tried a few more times and
got a couple of USB Device Not Recognized errors that locked up the
computer.
I booted the second machine into WIndows XP and found that the drive
worked, but very slowly - took 15-20 minutes to show up and then just
crawled. I figured the drive is toast. But then tonight I tried it again
in Linux. Worked just like normal. I copied the data on the drive to the
LInux machine - from my spot checks and looking at the the file sizes,
it seems to have copied over fine. From what I can see it is
uncorrupted and the copy was a fast as normal.
I booted the LInux / WinXP machine back into XP and again the drive is
running super slow. I started a command line chkdsk /r 3 hours ago and
it is 50% through step 4 - verifying file data.
Given that this works fine in linux but not windows - do you think that
might mean that the USB housing is defective and for some reason the
Linux USB drivers can somehow deal with it? If so - I could get a new
enclosure and move the drive. And why would a USB failure cause the
screen on the Win& PC to go blank and stay that until one monitor was
unplugged? Or is that just wicked coincidence?
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