Hello, all!

I know my problem is not directly related to this forum, but I really don't know where to ask, so I decided to ask for HELP here... PLEASE!!!

My problem is that my two external 2.5" HDDs enclosed in different USB2.0/FireWire boxes sometimes become disconnected from the system. It started to happend several months ago and I don't see any consequence in this to happend. Nothing was changed in general. Nothing was added. Time period of this problem to happend is also variable. One hard drive box has several LEDs and they all still light but the drive simple don't respond. The other box has only one LED that lights on when the drive is connected and flashes when you access the drive. With this drive when the problem happends the box's LED simply turns off, what basicaly means there is no power to the drive. You can imagine the results, taking in account that I use one of these drives to store my Outlook emails, Miranda databases and other pretty important data.

I really hope someone might had the same problem and have any ideas about solution.

My system is Dual-AMD Athlon XP 2400 based on Tyan Tiger MPX-4M motherboard with 512 Mb RAM. The motherboard has only USB 1.1, so I use PCI Card to have USB 2.0 and FireWire. Actualy this card is 3 in 1, having on board USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 and ATA-100 RAID controllers. I use Windows XP SP1.

I should notice, that when I connect both boxes thru USB 2.0 on this PCI card - everything works fine, problem never appear. But the speeds are much slower, don't know why.

Any ideas? Or maybe any more questions I didn't answered to let you understand my problem?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ANY HELP!!!

Yours, Maxim.

P.S. Here is the picture of my 3 in 1 PCI card:

So nobody could help???

I checked out the drives on another computer and everything works fine! Also I installed another Firewire/USB2.0 PCI card into my computer, but drives don't work in my computer even with this new card. So it MUST be the problem with Windows or some software casing the problems. Any ideas now?

You are the only person who could help you in this difficult situation when a lot of things/devices are related with your problem. In your place I would like to disinstall all the related drivers and reboot windows...If you use 3rd party drivers for your ATA100 Card just try to uninstall and reinstall drivers of ATA RAID Controller and usb HDDs. Do not forget to check your usb2.0 cables and other HDD if any are connected directly to your ATA card or check IEEE 1394 to be sure that your ATA 100 RAID Controller is working. Hope it would solve the problem. Please let me know if other devices connected with other PCI slot are working, if so try changing PCI slots for your ATA RAID contriller.
At the last try running again your MB configuration Disk.