Anna, your post intrigued me. I searched this discussion group looking for
clues as to why a 40 GB Western Digital USB drive sometimes isn't getting a
drive letter but is getting connected (it can safe-removee; it is found to
be "working properly" by device manager).

That problem remains unsolved, but your allusion to general unpredictability
of USB 2.0 in a Windows environment matches somewhat my limited experience:
USB drives sometimes showing a drive letter, sometimes not; a cable-powered
USB 2.0 hub used to connect two printers causing the printers to work
intermitently.

I'd be interested to know if anyone can confirm the general compatibility
problems suspected by Anna or, better, shed some light on the causes of the
types of USB 2.0 problems that she mentions.

Thanks!

<snip>

"Anna" wrote:
>
> Bob:
> The following will probably be of little help to you with your problem but
> let me cite our experiences over the past two years or so with USB 2.0
> devices, particularly as they affect jump (flash, thumb, memory, etc.)
> drives and USB external hard drives...
>
> We have continually run into situations where apparently non-defective USB
> 2.0 devices connected to apparently non-defective USB ports in apparently
> properly-configured systems simply don't originally work, or stop working
> after a period of time, or work erratically, i.e., sometimes they do,
> sometimes they don't. For no accountable reason, the device will work in one
> machine and not in another. It's been an aggravating problem for many of us
> because we can't seem to find a common denominator to explain all these
> anomalies. We hardly ever ran into these problems with USB 1.0/1.1 devices,
> but of course the number of those devices in use at the time was a fraction
> of the number of USB 2.0 devices presently in use.
>
> We are fast coming to the conclusion that either there must be some
> fundamental incompatibility inherent in the USB 2.0 specification that is
> causing these types of problems as it involves the design and manufacture
> of these USB devices, and/or the system protocols and devices that are
> employed to work with these devices are defective in some way. Or perhaps
> it's just a matter of poor quality control in the manufacture of these
> devices (even extending to the same make & model of the device involved) in
> that sometimes they work; sometimes they don't. Or perhaps some
> incompatibility existing between the XP OS and the USB 2.0 specification
> that results in these puzzling occurrences.
>
> Anyway...
>
> In your particular case, as has been recommended - if you can, connect the
> device to another machine and see if it works. Do you have a jump drive or
> other USB device that you can connect to your computer's USB port(s)? What
> happens then? If it seems that the hard drive may be defective, can you
> remove it from the enclosure without voiding the warranty and connecting it
> as an internal drive to test it? Have you tried uninstalling the USB
> controllers in Device Manager, and rebooting, so that the OS will re:install
> those controllers? Have you been in touch with Iomega re this problem?
> Anna
>
>
>