External HD slow to be detected

I'm using a win2k machine with a brand new USB 2.0 compatible external 200GB
hard drive that I plug into my USB 2.0 port. It takes sometimes 30 minutes
to recognise its there and open up the drive!

I've tried plugging it into other USB ports and when I disconnect it, I do
so using the Unplug or Eject Hardware interface. I've also tried scanning
for new hardware which doesn't work, disk management interface doesn't
spring it into action either and the rescan disks option seems to do
nothing. There's no problems with the general system whilst I add the HD
like freezing and I am an administrator of the machine. I tried using the
drive on a win XP machine and it worked instantly so this is very peculiar!

Any known remedies?

wrote:

I'm using a win2k machine with a brand new USB 2.0 compatible external 200GB
hard drive that I plug into my USB 2.0 port. It takes sometimes 30 minutes
to recognise its there and open up the drive!

I've tried plugging it into other USB ports and when I disconnect it, I do
so using the Unplug or Eject Hardware interface. I've also tried scanning
for new hardware which doesn't work, disk management interface doesn't
spring it into action either and the rescan disks option seems to do
nothing. There's no problems with the general system whilst I add the HD
like freezing and I am an administrator of the machine. I tried using the
drive on a win XP machine and it worked instantly so this is very peculiar!

Any known remedies?

Well if misery loves company, I have the same problem - Win2K and a new
WD 120GB HD attached via a USB-IDE adapter. I had previously used this
adapter with several different drives without this type of problem. If
I'm remembering correctly, there wasn't this problem at the beginning
with this drive and I was able to partition the drive and format a
couple of the partitions and access it at will. This business of it not
showing up in My Computer when I first boot the system up in the morning
may have started after I hid all partitions except a fat32 partition
that I made active and installed Win98 on.

Unlike your situation, if I boot into WinXP it doesn't solve the
problem. Like you, I have tried all the Refresh tricks and Unplug & plug
back in etc. It seems that if I ignore it and go about doing other
things and later go into Disk Management it will suddenly appear. A
guaranteed way is to boot into its Win98 and then go back to Win2K. Once
it has been recognized, that recognition survives a re-boot. It is in
the Bios's HD Boot list, so Bios recognition wouldn't appear to be a
problem. My prob *might* be from hiding those partitions, but my
interest at the moment is getting that Win98 stable enough to allow me
to install the drivers from too much hardware that it doesn't recognize.

Sorry, but no solution as yet.

Bob