I've had occasional issues where this external drive becomes unusable with my XP and W7 machines. It shows up in Drive Management but with no drive letter and properties aren't accessible. No sign of it in Windows Explorer. The annoying thing was this didn't always happen. Changing the USB cable didn't help. The green light was on and so there appeared to be enough power.
I saw in some other forum that several others had the same issue and there were some several software "solutions" solutions that didn't seem to work.
Anyway, just yesterday I examined the USB access point to the Iomega drive and the cable connector and it appeared that there was mechanical interference at the connection point to the drive, in that the plastic surround to the USB connector on the drive is slightly recessed and the connector (although apparently mating correctly) was not really in as far as I thought it should be. Looking at the cable connector, there is a ring of plastic that is a little smaller than the rest of the connector, like a sort of nose and it was this bit that was preventing the connector going all the way in. Being only a lead, I deployed a Stanley knife and pared off this narrow ring (about 2mm wide), leaving 2mm more metal visible. Bingo, it apppeared that not all of the USB pins were properly connecting (although some obviouslky were). The drive was immediately fully operational. Wanted to pass this on, as it appears to me that the design of the Iomega connector surround is a little too narrow to allow at least some USB cable connectors to enter properly.
Regards to all
tilgate
I saw in some other forum that several others had the same issue and there were some several software "solutions" solutions that didn't seem to work.
Anyway, just yesterday I examined the USB access point to the Iomega drive and the cable connector and it appeared that there was mechanical interference at the connection point to the drive, in that the plastic surround to the USB connector on the drive is slightly recessed and the connector (although apparently mating correctly) was not really in as far as I thought it should be. Looking at the cable connector, there is a ring of plastic that is a little smaller than the rest of the connector, like a sort of nose and it was this bit that was preventing the connector going all the way in. Being only a lead, I deployed a Stanley knife and pared off this narrow ring (about 2mm wide), leaving 2mm more metal visible. Bingo, it apppeared that not all of the USB pins were properly connecting (although some obviouslky were). The drive was immediately fully operational. Wanted to pass this on, as it appears to me that the design of the Iomega connector surround is a little too narrow to allow at least some USB cable connectors to enter properly.
Regards to all
tilgate