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Does the drive turn on (light comes on when being plugged in) ?

If so try to open windows explorer and see if it is there, if it isn't click 'My Computer' to make Windows look again and see if that does it ..


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Hey Tom, that was Brian (Jazzman) whose advice I was quoting, about plugging into the computer first.

Apparently, as has been pointed out, there are multiple scenarios here with multiple solutions. Collectively, we're coming up with some good suggestions of things to try. You should try my tip, about using a powered hub for the 'extra' end on that Y cable. And then Brian's about using Paragon Partition Manager.


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I put out a post a couple of weeks ago addressing this problem. I had an UREKA moment. My USB port would not work also and I thought about sending the whole lot back to PG for replacement. However, one day I thought I would give it one last try and I noticed that my printer was on. I wasn't using it so I turned it off. The USB hard Drive booted right up and every day since then It's worked perfectly, wih the printer turned off, that is. So I think that "my" computer has a limit on how many USB ports the system can handle properly. I have an IBM 2.2 Giga Hertz computer with 5 USB ports, 3 in the back, 2 in the front. I use the three in the back for my mouse, my keyboard, and my printer. The front two I use for BB everything HD and my I-Pod. By the way I was having problems with my I-Pod USB cable also and turning the printer off fixed that too. My suggestion is to start unpluging USB devices such as your printer until you get positive results on the BB USB port. I hope this helps.

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Good solution possibility David

However, I think that it may be possible that the USB Power was overloaded, not having enough left over for the drive, which would also explain why turning devices off helped to solve the issue. Once they were turned off more power was available at the port the drive was plugged into..meaning it wasn't necessarily that your computer wasn't seeing that many devices, but that the power wasn't there for the device to properly boot.

Still another great idea to try.


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Quote:

I put out a post a couple of weeks ago addressing this problem. I had an UREKA moment. My USB port would not work also and I thought about sending the whole lot back to PG for replacement. However, one day I thought I would give it one last try and I noticed that my printer was on. I wasn't using it so I turned it off. The USB hard Drive booted right up and every day since then It's worked perfectly, wih the printer turned off, that is. So I think that "my" computer has a limit on how many USB ports the system can handle properly. I have an IBM 2.2 Giga Hertz computer with 5 USB ports, 3 in the back, 2 in the front. I use the three in the back for my mouse, my keyboard, and my printer. The front two I use for BB everything HD and my I-Pod. By the way I was having problems with my I-Pod USB cable also and turning the printer off fixed that too. My suggestion is to start unpluging USB devices such as your printer until you get positive results on the BB USB port. I hope this helps.



Is that a 'eureka' moment, or maybe an 'ikea' moment?

Good tip, though! See my post above, about checking the power on your USB ports.


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Some of us are not as tech savvy ,as say guys like Matt and Mac. My method is to try different things before I call for help. When BIAB 2009 came out, I ordered the HD version. It came with a Y usb cable and I couldn't get it to work. Lucky for me PG Music had already sent me the cds so I just sent the HD back. They sent me an email saying that it worked fine there. I then went out and bought an Iomega 250GB powered HD. It has worked almost perfect but there are some quirks such as I cannot have it on when I power up with a cold boot or Win XP won't load. Last night I got fatal errors each time I tried to install a real tracks cd (about 80% through the installation process) if I didn't power everything down and reboot before installing each real tracks cd (3 ea). I got them all installed okay though. I'm using a Toshiba 105 Satellite laptop. I had the feeling that perhaps my usb ports were under-powered so I bought a powered hub to have handy. I'm running my Edirol ua-4fx off the laptop with no problems though. I'm think that running too many peripherals off the laptop usb ports has an effect on the power available. There are some components that say not to run them from a powered hub. The Edirol is one of them. FWIW

Last edited by Shastastan; 02/25/10 02:24 PM.

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I did pull out the hard drives and mucked with them and some cables.

Note this..Hold the hard drive to your ear. If you hear click click but no whir it isn't going to work. Very scientific.

If it goes click and then whir she's fine.

Now that's some high tech freakin trouble shooting right there.

Reminds me of when country music depressed me and I was told to play it backwards.

Durned if the woman didn't come back, the pickup with her, the dog came to life and I got my gol danged job back. Wow. Really easy eh? Just like whoopin the Ruskies at hockey tonight though I was a brass band practice until the last 12 minutes. Durn.


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Hi Matt,

I have spent the last few hours going over all the combinations on two computers (with different leads etc) and I think that it proves that you have to know your unique computer the same as your own body

On my two computers the consistant events are if I plug the lead into the external hard drive first and then the the black and red to the computer neither will recognise the drive in any combination of USB ports - I even tried the disconnect the USB printer and other USB connections with no result - but if I do it the other way with connection to the computer first in any order then it works here even with all other USB ports connected to their devices

I did find at times that it took some time to install the port software and to show recognition but it works fine for something that is always connected here - I found that to defrag the BIAB External Drive helps to speed up the recognition

I also just noticed something I cannot remember on XP and that is in Windows 7 in the Device Manager area for the USB ports/hubs there is a Power Management page that by default has the "allow the computer to turn off off this device to save power" and I am now going to see what effect this has on the two options of the external drive and others

The Paragon Partition Manager finds the drive no matter what you do and it either shows a drive letter my way or un-allocated as per the instructions- and when you assign a drive letter it works normally for that session.
This proves that it has enough power to run the drive but not recognise it and automatically assign a drive letter

This is getting more important to solve as the BIAB external drive is becoming more critical for some as the package grows in size
Brian


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just a couple of points that might or not be relevent to this thread.
1. computer power supply.
lets backtrack a tad.
originally personal computers were sold on the concept in the past few years
of the magic marketing phrase "plug n play".
more like "plug n hope"..lol.
heres what i'm finding with many friends pc's etc etc.
originally when they got their systems mostly everything was fine because the systems
were lightly loaded. mebe just a simple one drive system.
but over the past few years many people have added all sorts of peripherals n stuff
to their systems. some daw systems now might have multiple drives, usb dongles
for some software (i stay away from such.) , and lots of other doodads.
it all starts to add up mates. for some users the system is their complete and sometimes
complex not just music creation center but entertainment center.
given the above, the question arises can the original el cheapo power supply keep up. ??
in summary many pc's started off simply...but now are supporting lots of doodads.
ive seen it many times with friends systems...the original factory installed power supply
which was prolly chosen to keep the pc retail price down by the manufacturer might be under strain.
2. lets talk outboard usb drives.
some info.

if you go into any reatail store youll see various brand name drives in an enclosure with such names as freeagent//mybook n lots of other names.
but it seems some people often have probs with them.
after much testing i personally prefer takeing regular desktop drives and putting em in a 40 buk enclosure by acomdata for example.
ive had zero probs with this approach.
thus ..were i to go the pg usb drive sapproach...for safety i would prolly copy the contents immediately to
a desktop drive in an enclosure and run off that.
and prolly do an added copy to another usb drive.
the acomdata enclosures just have 2 chords.
one for usb and one for power. ive found them nice n easy and never a problem myself.
ymmv etc //do your own testing.
might i suggest as an option pg consider useing regular desktop drives in an enclosure ...
thus negatiting the xy chord biz ??


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The cable end which plugs into the drive I have found that if you move the unit itself or touch/move the cable the least little bit it will disconnect......I think this is a potentional problem? I owned a first generation IPAQ that had a very fragile connector which evential failed all together.

Tom

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Manning, along those lines, although my external drive worked fine, I took it out of the enclosure and just popped it in as another internal drive. Working fine.

Brian, about finding a difference in which end of the USB cable you plug in first, that's just weird. I cannot imagine why it would be so.

By the way, whenever the software asks me a question about "Allow the computer ..." my nearly automatic answer is No.


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Hi Matt,

I can only report what is happening here and it could be something in the dual role of a USB port being both data transfer and power source - a friend of mine has a Fujitsu external drive powered by a 5 amp power pack and a normal single USB cable which works fine - to me this is a better way

The point of the comment on "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is that it is checked as the default setting

Brian


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Matt Finley
shrewd move mate.
frankly i'm amazed that some people buy a nice powerfull quad i7 system
for lotsa buks n then only put one drive in it.
an extra second internal 7200 rpm 32 mb cache drive in a desktop is only 70 buks.
no brainer imho. also good for backing up stuff from the OS drive
that came with the system.
(just recently i saw several posts on various recording forums where
people hadnt backed up their songs from the main OS drive , the OS drive
took a dive and they lost everything. )

one could then just hook up the pg usb drive n copy its contents over to the 70 bukker drive.
haveing done that store the pg drive safely away n mebe also back up to dvd etc
and/or another usb drive n free up a usb port that might be needed for other uses.


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Hi manning

I am sure that you did not intend it but your post to Matt was tagged to my post and could have referred to the only person on this thread that displays having an i7 machine

Just to complete the facts and avoid any misunderstandings I forward the following comments

1.My HP Pavilion i7 machine has 2 x 1Tb hard drives plus it houses 2 x 300 Gb removable hard drives - so my BIAB is in 3 of the four areas for safety and the BIAB Fujitsu external hard drive is used for gigs

2.My comments on the cable problem that users are having stems from the initial delivery of the Ultapack and the hitches I had getting it recognised - and how I made it work here and for others in my work group

3.Since the beginning I have tried to assist users here by attempting to recreate their problems and offer a tried solution - I have done this without sarcasm or belittlement or telling people how to spend their money

Brian


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Hey, guys. Andrew suggested I open the HD and check the connections. It was almost completely disengaged from the SATA port! I plugged it in and all is well now. Thanks again, Andrew!


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Tom Smith
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Tom, that has happened to me once in the past, too. Shipping sometimes shakes them up a bit, I guess. Always worth checking; easy enough to pop the case open to look, and re-seat the connections.


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Quote:

Hi Matt,

I can only report what is happening here and it could be something in the dual role of a USB port being both data transfer and power source - a friend of mine has a Fujitsu external drive powered by a 5 amp power pack and a normal single USB cable which works fine - to me this is a better way




- Agreed.
Quote:


The point of the comment on "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is that it is checked as the default setting


Quote:

Brian




- Thanks, now I understand better. I really wish the operating system would not do things like that. Is that default setting related to the power scheme selected, or always on?


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Jazzman
no..not intended mate.
you have a nice set up there.
i was just commenting generally bout various recording forums
threads where i notice people got an i7 , ..with one drive.
so if the one drive goes down hard they are in trouble.
god bless.


retired puter engr....powertracks on amd......NICE !
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