External HDD Plug & Play Problem

Connected to my notebook via a powered hub are two external drives . I have
it configured such that when I return from work I plug in the USB hub open
my notebook lid and the external drives are immediately recognised and fire
away. I have never had to reboot and it has worked well for 6 months. Then 3
days ago for no apparent reason my notebook would not display either of the
drives under Start | Computer. Rebooting fixes this problem but is a pain
(this takes several minutes at the moment). Curiously under the Device
Manager both drives are shown and under Properties for each is displayed
"This device is working properly." I have tried plugging the hub into a
different USB port to no avail and I have tried plugging each drive directly
into the notebook bypassing the hub. This results in the notebook
recognising new hardware and successful installation but again the drive
doesn't show. Any ideas on how to sort this problem out? Many thanks. pbl

Hi, pbl.

What does Disk Management say about that HDD?

Disk Management is one of the most useful utilities in Windows, and it has
been a part of every Windows since Win2K. There are several ways to access
it. My favorite is to just press or click Start, type diskmgmt.msc, and
press Enter.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

"pbl" <> wrote in message
news:02a6694d$0$20632$...
> Connected to my notebook via a powered hub are two external drives . I
> have it configured such that when I return from work I plug in the USB hub
> open my notebook lid and the external drives are immediately recognised
> and fire away. I have never had to reboot and it has worked well for 6
> months. Then 3 days ago for no apparent reason my notebook would not
> display either of the drives under Start | Computer. Rebooting fixes this
> problem but is a pain (this takes several minutes at the moment).
> Curiously under the Device Manager both drives are shown and under
> Properties for each is displayed "This device is working properly." I have
> tried plugging the hub into a different USB port to no avail and I have
> tried plugging each drive directly into the notebook bypassing the hub.
> This results in the notebook recognising new hardware and successful
> installation but again the drive doesn't show. Any ideas on how to sort
> this problem out? Many thanks. pbl

"R. C. White" <> wrote in message
news:OfO$...
> Hi, pbl.
>
> What does Disk Management say about that HDD?
>
> Disk Management is one of the most useful utilities in Windows, and it has
> been a part of every Windows since Win2K. There are several ways to
> access it. My favorite is to just press or click Start, type
> diskmgmt.msc, and press Enter.
>
> RC
> --
> R. C. White, CPA
> San Marcos, TX
>
> Microsoft Windows MVP
> Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64
>
> "pbl" <> wrote in message
> news:02a6694d$0$20632$...
>> Connected to my notebook via a powered hub are two external drives . I
>> have it configured such that when I return from work I plug in the USB
>> hub open my notebook lid and the external drives are immediately
>> recognised and fire away. I have never had to reboot and it has worked
>> well for 6 months. Then 3 days ago for no apparent reason my notebook
>> would not display either of the drives under Start | Computer. Rebooting
>> fixes this problem but is a pain (this takes several minutes at the
>> moment). Curiously under the Device Manager both drives are shown and
>> under Properties for each is displayed "This device is working properly."
>> I have tried plugging the hub into a different USB port to no avail and I
>> have tried plugging each drive directly into the notebook bypassing the
>> hub. This results in the notebook recognising new hardware and successful
>> installation but again the drive doesn't show. Any ideas on how to sort
>> this problem out? Many thanks. pbl
>

RC,

The drives do not show up in Disk Management, although they do appear in the
Device Manager under Disk drives. I can pull out the USB cable that goes to
the hub and watch the drives diappear in Device Manager and then plug it
back in and what them reappear. I don't get the windows sound, though when
you normally plug in a device.

I just rebooted to get the drives back again and then pulled out the plug
and reset it to find the drives are gone again. I initially thought it may
have had something to do with standby mode but that just disproved that
hypothesis.